Three people were recently sentenced in a bizarre insurance fraud case involving a bear suit, metal claws and luxury cars. A video helped break the case open. California Department of Insurance officials say the proliferation of video has been a boon to their fraud investigations.
The three people involved submitted a video in claims to multiple insurance companies saying that a bear broke into their luxury cars in Lake Arrowhead and ransacked them.
It's definitely one of the more absurd things I've seen,” said Eric Hood, a captain in the fraud division at the California Department of Insurance.
“It obviously is not a bear in their vehicle.”
He said when insurance companies reported the video to his team they sent it to a California Department of Wildlife biologist. The biologist said the bear was actually a person in a bear suit holding metal claws.
Hood said it’s one of the more unusual videos he’s seen, “You know, like the length someone went to commit insurance fraud.”
Hood said it's one in a string of creative videos he’s seen recently that people have submitted as evidence in insurance claims. Like staged car accidents, slip-and-falls and hit-and-runs.
“It was someone basically, you know, pretending to get hit when they weren't actually hit,” said of a staged accident video he saw.
He said the videos often end up being self-incriminating.
The department does not track the number of fraud cases that include video, but Hood said anecdotally they’ve increased over the last five years.