Eh?? - just like in a car crash, surely, if you get some of your loss reimbursed by the perp this comes off the insurance claim??
My thought more or less. But I guess there's two things going on. Well, three actually.
a. Insurance company pays the owner because of the loss of the airframe.
b. Criminal case due to vandalism is started by the government. Insurance waits for the outcome of this criminal case. Criminal case leads to conviction, which leads to a fine as compensation for immaterial damages (crying over a 172 presumably) or material damages not covered by the insurance.
c. Insurance company now starts a civil suit against the vandals, pointing to the outcome of the criminal suit as evidence, and claiming the payments to the owner plus some admin costs back.
In most cases, item c. leads to bankruptcy of the vandals, or their parents, with the insurance company losing money. Also, the insurance company may settle with the vandals into some sort of agreement preventing bankruptcy but leading to a lifetime of payments or something like that. In any case, item c is usually not a public case and none of the parties has any benefit by publishing about it anyway, so you don't normally hear from it anymore.