As insurance scams go...

A few days ago, my post was on the bear activity around Lake Tahoe, where black bears - their habitats smooshed down by development - are becoming more aggressive when it comes to breaking into homes, businesses, and cars. My brother Tom lives in Washington State, along the coast, and they have plenty of bears in their neck of the woods, too. I've seen them in the 'hood when visiting, and Tom and his wife have had a bear get into their car looking for food. Fortunately, it didn't do all that much damage. But black bears are super-strong, and when they're super hungry they can do a super amount of damage. 

Given the propensity of bears to trash cars, some enterprising yet none-to-bright scammers thought they'd take advantage of the criming o' the bears, and the fact that insurance policies usually cover damage wrought by marauding bears. Which I know thanks to a couple of throwaway lines from the New Yorker article last Thursday's post keyed off of:

Recently, an insurer received a claim that a bear had vandalized a Rolls-Royce; investigators showed security footage of the incident to a wildlife biologist, who determined that the perpetrator was a human in a bear costume. 

The insurance scamming knuckleheads submitted multiple claims for bear damage - same date/location - to different insurance companies for different vehicles. All were luxury vehicles - a Rolls-Royce Ghost and a couple of Mercedes - reportedly trashed by a bear. 

Despite testimony from wildlife experts that the car-trasher was a human in a bear costume, this probably could have turned into a "not all bears look alike" defense, if not for the fact that, after the wildlife folks had weighed in: 

Detectives then discovered the bear costume in the suspects’ home after executing a search warrant. (Source: The Guardian)

And a pretty crappy bear costume at that. OK, it was one step up from a Yogi Bear Halloween rig, but still. 

And this was not petty theft. The fraudulent claims amounted to over $140K. Seems they coulda/shoulda sprung for a better disguise - even if the guy in the bear suit doing the break probably wasn't wearing a white shirt...

But the thing about criminals is that a lot of them aren't all that bright. 

When Yogi Bear was a big thing back when I was a kid, one line in the cartoon's theme song was "Yogi Bear is smarter than the average bear." Not that Yogi Bear was all that smart. He had a little buddy, Boo Boo, who acted pretty much as Yogi's conscience and advisor. As Yogi would say, "Boo Boo, you've tried to stop my brilliant ideas with common sense a thousand times. Has it ever worked?"

These jamokes were none to bright, either. Maybe next time just use the fake claws to destroy the car's innards. Don't get tricky and include a security video of the incident - especially if you're not willing to get a more credible costume and take a few lessons on how to walk like a bear. Or make sure you have a Boo Boo in your life, and for god's sake, listen to him. 

That said, as insurance scams go, at least this one gets points for high entertainment value.