Something Offbeat
When your bad bear costume gets you arrested
>> Okay, Mike, I've got a weird story for you. >> All right, well, I hope so. That's kind of the point of the show. It's called "Something Off Beat." >> True, true. >> And a friend of the show, Sam Benson Smith, he's the digital managing editor at Odyssey's KNX News Radio in Los Angeles, scouted a really funny tale out of his area for us. It's about insurance fraudsters who tried to pull off a scheme using a not-so-great bear costume. Insurance fraud stories are always great, and I actually have heard this story, and I was kind of wondering when we were gonna get around to doing it. And by the way, we've had Sam on the show before, I think, as I recall, to talk about another bear. It was a real bear caught smiling for the cameras in the Hollywood Hills. >> Great episode. I recommend our listeners go back and listen to that one. And this one might be even weirder, actually. When Sam sent it to me, I knew we would have to talk about it on the show like you're saying, Mike. And you were ready to jump on a plane when he was able to talk, so I talked to him about it. I know Mike Rogers, but I tried to make you proud. >> Well, and I apologize for that, by the way, having to run out of the studio. Literally racing to catch a plane. You just heard from Lauren, one of our producers. I'm your host, Mike Rogers. Well, I'm kind of the semi-host this week, and this is something offbeat. We've had you on the show before to talk about weird bear stuff. And you found another weird bear story for us. We love it, thank you. This story in particular is about some, I'm going to have to say, not very good criminals that tried to pull off an insurance scam involving a pretty campy bear costume. What was your first response when you heard about this story? >> Sure, you know what? >> Sure. Insurance fraud is shockingly common, especially in California, and just in my own experience as someone who, I had a mechanic once suggest I commit insurance fraud, because I got into a fender vendor on the freeway, someone cut out of the carpool lane, someone I'd pull up short, small fender vendor. But I go to this guy, I think like a friend that recommended me, he's like, "Oh, he's great." Like, whatever, he's great. He's not too expensive, whatever. Like maybe I'll be able to fix my bumper out of pocket. And he tells me, he's like, "Actually, we dent to the hood. "You can't get a dent out of a hood "because it's high heating and et cetera, et cetera." Which makes sense. But he said, "You know what you can do, "you might be found a fault for this fender vendor, "but just like park your car on the street "and then say that someone backed into your car." And I'm like, "No, you can't do that." But yeah, I saw it. I'm just like, "Yeah, man, I guess, I suppose so. "I'm sure you're overthinking it, "but why not get elaborate?" - Can you just go over the story for us in a little bit of detail since it was coming out of your newsroom a little bit? - So this is up in Lake Arrowhead, which is in the San Bernardino mountains. San Bernardino County, I used to partially cover it 'cause I started in California out in Greater Palm Springs. So I was kind of in our area a little bit. And Lake Arrowheads, like around Big Bear, people go up there to vacation and stuff, not really a ski area, but basically this video, which has since been released by the California Department of Insurance, you see this kind of greeny considering the quality of ring doorbell cameras and stuff nowadays. Even my video on my automatic pet feeder is pretty solid at this point. It looks like CCTV footage. It looks like they converted it off tape. And you just see this car parked in a manner that you can't really see the door of how to get in. This is luxury car. It's actually happened in a few cars, but I believe that the main video you've put the folks on was the Rolls Royce. And you just see this door open outside of this cabin, I guess up in Lake Arrowhead. And you see what is claimed to be a bear. - Now, four people have been charged with insurance fraud and conspiracy for this scheme, and reports said they submitted similar claims for damage to two Mercedes cars. - Reports also said the alleged fraud led to a loss of more than $141,000 by the insurance companies. - Wow, so footage of this bear imposter wrecking the inside of a 2010 Rolls Royce ghost is available on the California Department of Insurance website. - So I had to go check out this video. And in it, you can see the person moving around. And to me, it looks very human. It doesn't look at all like a bear. It's torso moves in a human way. What did you think when you saw it? It was ridiculous. It was almost like a bit. It's like they were just going for some cheap laughs on the internet by using a costume that was obviously fake. - I would think if they just like fully committed and said it was some sort of like clip did or like a swatch, that would be, they would cut it off. And it's just rustling around in this Rolls Royce and causing damage. And I say quote unquote, damage, because I mean, you know, with a luxury car like that, you know, the interior, leather, all of that stuff, like slight damage can be considered major damage. But if someone did that in my civic, I mean, the back of my civic looks like that right now as a baseline. And then later it was revealed, you know, when you see agencies like the California Department of Insurance, that is a very rank and file, standard job and department. We see them releasing video. You know, it's going to be big. And basically they lay out all the evidence, show the video and just say like, yeah, don't do this. This is clearly insurance fraud. And, you know, kind of let the video speak for itself. And it's, it does, it does do a lot of speaking. I'll say that in life. - I checked out the press release that came from that agency and the markings on the car are like so mechanical looking and like even like that does not look like what would happen if a bear scratched your Rolls Royce leather. Has anybody checked in on what these suspects have said? Like why did they think that this was going to be believable or has it been kind of quiet on that front? - It's been pretty quiet. I mean, and I will say as far as like the claw marks and stuff goes, that one was just like a fully committing to just inadequacy. Like they are, they're clearly, they look like, you know, like pulled pork claws or whatever, you know, trendy things that I'm sure I've been given for Christmas when a relative who does not know me very well gets me something. It's either that or like, you know, claws used to dig up a garden. And your issue with that is there is so much, all there is is documentation of what a bear's paw looks like and what its clawing pattern looks like and how much force it can put into clawing and also like why it would claw certain things. So immediately it's just like fin and low effort and all of that stuff. And it's just like, looks like it's a light scraping or something like I've truly like worn, I've worn belts that have done more damage to back seats of cars. I think probably at Halloween, I wear a studded belt because I was Freddie Mercury. So, but as far as the suspects go, a lot of these stuff, like it can be hard to nail down these people, like their identities are out there in their LA area, people that did this outside of the area. I haven't seen them claw quite yet. I doubt they will. It's a bad look, it's embarrassing. And now they're facing both, you know, the financial aspect of it. They're not going to get their money. I mean, their car is a strivable still, but also now they're facing big time charges. So that's, that's not great overall. I was wondering, you know, LA, the LA area, a lot of people are in the film industry. And I was kind of wondering why they didn't get a better costume. I feel like if you're going to get a bare costume anywhere, that's going to be a high quality, it would be in the Hollywood area. What was your take on this costume? Do you think they could have gotten a better quality one? - Yeah, 100%. I mean, I come from the land of mass-godding and mass-godding, I scored a little bit in college. And, you know, there is, so the better ones, I have some structure to them. This one was like, you know, I think of, in pop culture, you know, in recent years, I cannot see Midsomar because I'm a very scared person, but I've seen the bare costume from it. Also, Nicholas Cage's "Wicker Man" is famously in a bare costume. Those looked better. A lot of it is just about like, a human being is not that broad. So, you know, you can't just have fabric hanging. Considering they were luxury cars, I really think they could have gone to a costume shop or something like that and figured it out. Just get a little bit more of the size incorrect. - Have you heard cases like this before? - So, I was racking my brain. And, I mean, I know specifically instances of some animals doing a lot of damage. And I think during my time when I was up in Boston, and I might've been when I was working for the Boston Globe, it might've been a little bit afterwards, but a couple of raccoons fell through a skylight in a house like up in Cape Cod, I believe. And they caused, I think, between $16, $80,000 of damage because they were trying to get out. And both of them fell through the same skylight. And I learned later that home insurance policies are in the bulk of them. They have exclusions for damage by vermin and raccoons are considered vermin. They also consider Armadillos vermin. So, that was an instance of fraud. - Mike, you are an expert in weird news. Have you ever covered an insurance fraud story as strange as this bare costume one? - Like I said, insurance fraud stories are always great. I remember one about a guy in Australia who tried to fake his own death in a hiking accident. And he did it and pulled it off and moved to New Zealand. He got remarried, and then years later, he ran into his own brother. You know, he hadn't told anybody. And then he bumps into his own brother in New Zealand and his brother goes back to Australia and told the guy's ex-wife and the whole thing unraveled. Maybe he should've moved farther away from Australia. - Yeah, I love that it was the brother that unraveled it. That is so on point, it would be the brother. - He said, "Hey, aren't you supposed to be dead?" (laughs) - Sam also found another wild one closer to where you guys are in KRLD. It was in Galveston, Texas. - But then I did some more research into it. And there is this story, which is, I think it's from back in, I wanna say it was from 2015. And it's down in Galveston, Texas. And there's this guy who has a Bugatti, very expensive car, and I wanna say it was like a 2009, I don't know, you know, the specific model of it. But he has this Bugatti and his insurance claim was, the Bugatti ended up in Galveston Bay in Galveston, Texas. And what he said was he swerved to miss a pelican, crash the car into the bay, insurance, but claim. The funny thing is, what caught him was the fact that when you're driving around a Bugatti, like I, you know, I can't speak necessarily to the financials of Galveston, Texas, but he's like in a particularly, in a place where he stands out. Like my office is in Far from Beverly Hills, like we see roles, we see all of these things, we see cyber trucks, unfortunately, but they're not getting all these photos taken, but this guy sticks out like a sore thumb. So someone took a video of the guy driving the car and there's no pelican. So that's what caught the guy. And yeah, I believe, I won't speak this 'cause I don't remember what the follow up was on it, but I believe he ended up having to serve jail time for it. (upbeat music) - I went out for a walk in my neighborhood in Chicago, right around the time we recorded this interview, and I ran into a fox. Now it didn't wreck my property or anything, thankfully, but it was still a weird sight, right in the middle of the city by a busy street and everything. Have you ever had animals damage your property? - We have, we had some possums burrow a hole into our garage once, that was fun, and a cardinal, like the bird, the cardinal. I didn't know this, well, they're very loud and they're very aggressive too. This particular cardinal took a liking to one of the side mirrors on my wife's car, and he'd fly down and he'd perch on this mirror and bend over and look at his reflection and it would drive him crazy and he'd peck away at it on the mirror and he'd finally crack the glass. My wife, my wife, yes, my wife still calls him that damn cardinal and shakes her fist whenever she thinks about him. Well, what about Sam, then, what did you ask him? - I did. (upbeat music) Is this something that happens a lot to people's cars? In the Los Angeles area, do bears come and ruin property? Or is that still kind of a rare thing? - I would say as far as breaking into cars specifically, not a major concern there, you will see, especially out in the San Gabriel Valley and when I last was on this podcast, I talked about the Hollywood smiling bear and that bear was at the edge of the San Gabriel Valley. That specific valley, just speaking geographically, there are no freeway impediments for it to connect to a massive amount of green space. Actually, the San Gabriel Valley, I wanna say national monument and national park collects is connects to Angeles National Forest, which also connects to San Bernardino Mountain, so it's all interconnected. So San Gabriel Valley, I would say, and I think the day I would back this up is the highest likelihood of you encountering wildlife and bears specifically. So you'll see a lot of the time bears, I've covered the plenty of times that bears will set up residence as like they'll set up a den underneath a house. And that happened, I think, as recently as the summer, I wanna say, it was definitely San Gabriel Valley. I think I know it was Monrovia. Yeah, no, I used to work in Monrovia. So they'll do that. They'll kind of wander around backyards. There was this really nuts video from an handful of years ago where like, yeah, there was just a bear that was like walking on a retaining wall and I believe this woman like, I wanna say it was her younger cousin was with her and she scared it off, which is something else, but they are, they're black bears, they're not grizzlies. And as far as like the destructive force and aggression that exists, black bears are less aggressive than grizzlies. So if you go up in Northern California, you'll have black bears that will, if there's food in a car, tear it apart, go nuts. - Did you have any other like weird bear stories you had found since we last talked about the smiling bear? - The one thing that I always, always think about, it's like my favorite bear story, is it's back in 2004, it's up in the Pacific Northwest. And there's a story that this guy tells up, it's up in Washington state about a bear that comes to a campground by Mount Baker. And he proceeds to drink 36 beers out of a cooler. And the funny thing is that he only drank Rainier and he left all of the bush alone. So he developed a taste and decided to just drink 36 cans of Rainier. So power to it, slept it off. I mean, if I don't know what the weight of the guy is, but that's at least a solid buzz for him. And he probably doesn't have eye tolerance, I would imagine. - As a Midwesterner myself, which gives me bad memories of college. So I, yeah, support the Rainier bear, for sure. - I'm Mike Rogers. Thanks so much for listening to "Something Off Beat." This episode written and produced by Laura Berry and Chris Blake. Audio editing by Chris Blake and original music by Byron Catwood. Now to keep listening, please subscribe to us on the Odyssey app or Spotify, Apple. Wherever you get your podcasts, and if you have your own offbeat story, and you think we should cover, please send it to us at somethingoffbeats@audacy.com. www.wahix.com. (upbeat music)
Sam Benson Smith, digital managing editor at Audacy’s KNX, brought us a story about insurance fraudsters who clipped up by using a bad bear suit. We’ll tell you all about it.