Food-habituated bears sometimes break into backcountry cabins and cars at campgrounds. Once every long while, there are disturbing human-bear conflicts. But sometimes, bears just get accused of things they didn’t do.
Last month, a bear was initially blamed for killing Montana camper Dustin Kjersem. State police later charged a human suspect with murder. And this week, law enforcement authorities in Los Angeles arrested four men in a bizarre insurance scam.
The men are accused of trying to bilk two insurance companies out of nearly $142,000 by blaming a bear for damage to a Rolls Royce and two Mercedes in the San Bernardino Mountains earlier this year.
In two separate claims to different companies, the men provided a grainy, nighttime video of the marauding “bear” inside the vehicles. They also showed what appeared to be claw marks on the seats and doors.
But something was fishy. Insurance investigators believed that they were watching not a bear but “clearly a human in a bear suit,” the insurance department said.
To confirm their suspicions, they sought out the expert opinion of biologist Kevin Howells with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Howells pointed out “visible slack in the suit.”
“As soon as the bear came into frame, to me, it was pretty quick and fairly obvious that it was not [a real bear],” Howells told The Washington Post.
Detectives executed a search warrant for what had been dubbed Operation Bear Claw and found the costume in one of the suspects’ homes.
A bear costume, seized from one of the men’s homes. Photo: California Department of Insurance
