Granny Talk

Scammers are getting more creative in fooling people to steal their money.

Four residents of Los Angeles, California, USA, claimed more than $141,000 from insurance companies over alleged damages to high-end cars caused by a bear attack.

Ruben Tamrazian, 26, of Glendale; Ararat Chirkinian, 39, of Glendale; Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32, of Glendale; and Alfiya Zuckerman, 39, of Valley Village, filed car damage claims in January 2024, but the claims aroused suspicion from the insurance company, which disputed them.

Based on the photos and video submitted as evidence by the insurance claimants, a bear attacked their 2010 Rolls Royce Ghost, damaging its interior on 28 January in Lake Arrowhead.

Further scrutiny by investigators from the California Department of Insurance determined that the bear was actually a person in a bear costume.

A biologist from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife reviewed the video, along with two other similar videos submitted by the same claimants for earlier bear attacks and damages to a 2015 Mercedes G63 AMG and a 2022 Mercedes E350. The biologist opined that it was clearly a human in a bear suit.

After executing a search warrant, detectives found the bear costume in one of the suspects’ homes, confirming the fraud. Tamrazian, Chirkinian, Muradkhanyan and Zuckerman were arrested on 13 November and charged with insurance fraud and conspiracy.

Meanwhile, British phone company Virgin Media O2 reported that a grandmother had received 1,000 calls from suspected scammers since 14 November.

In the company’s recording of the calls, Grandma Daisy kept the callers on the phone as she pretended not to understand the instructions and veered away from the topic by telling irrelevant stories about her grandchildren, CBS News reported.

The old lady herself had so much stamina in talking on the phone with different scammers because she is an artificial intelligence-built robot designed to waste phone scammers’ time.

“The newest member of our fraud-prevention team, Daisy, is turning the tables on scammers — outsmarting and outmaneuvering them at their own cruel game simply by keeping them on the line,” Murray Mackenzie, director of fraud at Virgin Media O2, said in a statement, according to CBS News.

Mackenzie said Daisy’s phone number was deliberately added to online lists used by scammers targeting UK consumers to prevent them from victimizing real people.

When they call, Daisy “has all the time in the world” to keep the scammers occupied, he told CBS News.