The video showed a bear beating up a Rolls Royce. Investigators consider it was an individual in a bear suit

In January, a surveillance camera captured disturbing footage of what seemed to be a bear entering a Rolls Royce parked outside a house within the Southern California resort community of Lake Arrowhead, smashing the seats and smashing the inside.

But an eagle-eyed auto insurer had a sense something was flawed with the furry intruder. After an investigation, the California Department of Insurance concluded that the damage was not the work of a bear in any respect, but quite an attempted insurance fraud.

“Upon further examination of the video“The investigation determined that the bear was actually a person wearing a bear costume,” the Department of Insurance said in a press release Wednesday.

Four Los Angeles area residents were arrested and charged with insurance fraud and conspiracy after the department's investigation uncovered three allegedly bogus insurance claims for staged bear attacks on three cars, including the 2010 Rolls Royce Ghost.

The agency alleges that Ruben Tamrazian, 26, Ararat Chirkinian, 39, Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32, and Alfiya Zuckerman, 39, used the scheme to defraud insurance firms of nearly $142,000.

According to the department, these 4 got here to the eye of insurance investigators with a series of suspicious insurance claims. They called the investigation “Operation Bear Claw.”

One claim is that a bear entered the Rolls Royce and damaged its interior near Lake Arrowhead in San Bernardino County in January. As evidence, they submitted a black-and-white surveillance video to an insurance company that showed the suspected bear moving around within the automotive. This isn’t unusual within the Mountain West hungry bears mutilate parked cars.

The department's investigators then found nearly similar claims for 2 different cars from other insurance firms, each with similar videos attached as evidence of the damage.

Suspecting that the bear in query was not actually a bear in any respect, investigators asked a biologist from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to review the videos and weigh in.

The verdict?

“They also felt it was clearly a human in a bear suit,” the department said.

Investigators then executed a search warrant for the suspects' home with assistance from the Glendale Police Department and the California Highway Patrol. Among the items confiscated: a bear costume.