Criminal Masterminds

When foolproof schemes somehow, unexpectedly, come back to maul the ingenious villains.

Believe it or not, this image does not depict an actual bear.

You’ve got to hand it to criminals. When it comes to obtaining money unlawfully — which is obviously more attractive than legal employment, alarm clocks, tax withholding, tyrannical supervisors, personal financial risk and other impediments to a comfortable work-life balance — their collective ingenuity can be jawdropping.

I’m thinking particularly of a small gang of Los Angelinos, who wanted money more or less off the books and came to the insight that some institutions not only have money, but regularly pay out handsome sums to total strangers. Hello! Opportunity! In this case, the institution was the insurance industry, which among other categories of coverage will reimburse policy holders for damage done to their vehicles by third parties — such as other vehicle owners, vandals, burglars and bears. The last scenario is what intrigued the gang, whose epiphany was that they could stage bear attacks on their cars, getting video of the destruction in progress and submitting claims for the damage. It worked. They received $141,839 from the insurers for repair of three luxury vehicles parked in the Lake Arrowhead neighborhood on January 28, 2024.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: how in the world did they find a bear willing to be a part of the con? The notorious ursine career criminal Yogi Bear certainly wasn’t available. He was a cartoon character, and in any case died in 1972 in a Teton County, Wyoming jail cell after being detained as a bear of interest in several pic-i-nic basket disappearances and for public defecation in a national park. Guards there found him unresponsive hanging from a noose fashioned from a green necktie.

But never mind. These crooks didn’t need an actual bear. The genius part was dressing one of themselves in a bear suit fitted with metal meat-shredding tools in place of claws, and filming the cosplayer mauling the vehicle. How the authorities got suspicious is just one of the one-in-a million bits of bad luck. Here’s how a California Department of Insurance press release described the process:

The investigation began after an insurance company flagged a suspicious claim tied to a January 28, 2024, incident in Lake Arrowhead. The suspects claimed a bear entered their 2010 Rolls Royce Ghost and caused interior damage, submitting video footage to support the claim.

Upon further review, Department detectives determined the “bear” in the video was a person wearing a bear costume. Investigators later uncovered two additional fraudulent claims submitted to separate insurance companies involving the same date and location, this time tied to a 2015 Mercedes G63 AMG and a 2022 Mercedes E350.

To further verify the deception, a biologist from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife reviewed the footage and concluded the animal shown was clearly a human in a bear suit. Detectives later executed a search warrant and recovered the costume from the suspects’ home.

Again, you may have some questions. Why did the alleged bear not target a 1997 Nissan Sentra instead of a Rolls? If the gang, among them, owned two Benzes and a Rolls, what level of financial need demanded a fraudulent scheme? If the meat-shredding fake claw did $141,839 worth of damage, didn’t they have to use it for repairs to their fancy cars? But ours is not to reason why. It is for us but to grudgingly admire the brilliance of their plan. They wound up with jail terms this week not because they aren’t masterminds, but because some bloated bureaucrat somehow saw a cluster of wild-animal attacks against high-end automobiles as out of the ordinary and began asking impertinent questions.

Let me offer another example. Let’s imagine a high-profile businessman whose career has been regularly punctuated by findings of fraud against his various enterprises from casinos, to charities, to “universities” to his main eponymous real estate empire — the last of which yielded convictions on 40 counts of felony fraud. And let’s further imagine he has been twice elected president of the United States, where his conduct led to two impeachment proceedings, many criminal indictments and dozens of court decisions ruling his official actions unlawful and/or unconstitutional. I know it’s a stretch, but let your imagination run as wild as ICE, or a Lake Arrowhead man-bear.

So let’s say that this character wanted to obtain money unlawfully. Well, this would require some deft planning and airtight execution, because the eyes of the world would be upon him. Whatever the scheme, it must be not only airtight, but undetectable by the prying eyes of law enforcement; political adversaries; radical-left thugs and lunatics in the rigged public-interest universe; and the electorate. Well, the “what” of all this is simple:

1) pry valuable “gifts” and “investments” from Middle East foreign powers, such as jumbo jets and multi-billion-dollar stakes in your family’s businesses

2) shake down big corporations — who depend on the favor of your administration — for “donations” to Inaugural events, basketball-arena-sized ballrooms, gaudy, gilded arches, etc. and launder the funds through a series of interlocking PACs and non-profits

3) accept similar donations from the individuals, associates and families of those you pardon for their federal felonies (notably, most for fraud)

4) dispatch your children to cut real-estate deals all over the world, including Eastern Europe and the Middle East, where corrupt regimes grease the skids — including rewriting the law to accommodate your developments

5) file frivolous lawsuits against and sic your Gestapo justice department on private corporations that can’t risk a hostile administration and who subsequently “settle” by paying off multimillion dollar sums toward one of your various money-making schemes

6) invest in a cryptocurrency startup and then reverse your longheld contempt of crypto by forging policies to encourage a crypto economy, among other predations

Altogether, these plans are just like the bear-costume racket: an ingenious strategy for obtaining money by nefarious means with a perfect cover story: denial of a quid pro quo. It’s genius!

And that’s just how it has played out, again and again. For instance, when asked about an obvious bribe of a 747 from the Emir of Qatar, Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt simply replied that citizens need not be concerned, “because they know President Trump and they know that he only works with the interest of the American public in mind.” Boom! Case closed. Next question, please.

Cleverer still — because any probe about whether her remark was, metaphorically, a bear suit to conceal crime would fall to Trump’s Department of Justice — there was zero chance of a fluky investigation of the California Department of Insurance kind. That’s what I mean by foolproof.

Nobody can possibly be prosecuted for shredding this Mercedes.

A mastermind of a mastermind. Like Jarrelle Augustine, who Irvine, California police this week alleged bought and returned $34,000 worth of Lego kits at various Target stores, but not before removing the particularly valuable cellophane wrapped minifigures and replacing them with bags of dry Goya Pasta. Same weight, same sound when shaken, same brilliant means of going undetected. The switcheroo wasn’t noticed by a single one of Target’s return desks.

What eventually, miraculously, got him tripped up was the complaining of disgruntled customers who eventually opened the reshelved kits and found some Lego bricks plus potential dinner. Come on, how could even the most masterful of master criminals think that many chess moves ahead? Which is why Trump’s people can relax in the knowledge that theirs are perfect crimes. All 350 million Americans can get dried pasta in place of honest government, but what do they suppose Kash Patel or Todd Blanche or the Republican Congress will do about it?

I mean, unless there’s another million-to-one shot, and the Democrats return to power.