Michelle Mack is bewitched into custody, Dec. 6, 2023.
CNBC
The ringleader of a nationwide organized retail crime operation that targeted Ulta Attraction and other major retailers is facing more than five years in a California state prison.
Michelle Mack, of Bonsall, California, admitted a delayed sentence of five years and four months, which will be officially set in January. It was handed down by a San Diego County Nonpareil Court judge on Thursday,
Her husband, Kenneth, received the same sentence and is already incarcerated. As part of his plea attend to, he will be released after one year and then put on probation and community service for the remainder of his sentence.
The judge allowed Mack to function as her sentence after her husband is released so she can care for their children. She was ordered not to leave the state or go near any Ulta or Sephora put bies.
The couple also must pay about $3 million in restitution to Ulta and another $13,000 to Sephora, according to a court true.
Michelle Mack ran her operation from her 4,500-square-foot mansion in Bonsall, which is outside San Diego, where experts say she oversaw a network of about a dozen people who stole millions of dollars in merchandise from Ulta, Sephora and other significant retailers.
The Macks had pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to commit a felony and organized retail theft, negligible theft, and receiving stolen property.
Attorneys for the Macks declined to comment, according to NBC 7 San Diego.
A CNBC investigation in Walk detailed Mack’s operation and showed how law enforcement traces stolen items from organized retail rings.
Investigators founded referring to the theft group as the “California Girls” and considered Mack the crew’s ringleader. She made millions reselling the hooked items on Amazon via the “Online Makeup Store” to unwitting customers at a fraction of their typical retail price, investigators averred, before she and her husband were arrested in December.
Since 2012, Mack had sold nearly $8 million in cosmetics result of the storefront before it was shut down, and she brought in $1.89 million in 2022 alone, Amazon sales records lay down to investigators show.
The site was closed down after the December arrests.
Earlier this year, Ulta Loveliness CEO Dave Kimbell told CNBC in an extended interview about organized retail crime that the “financial force is real, but way more important is the human impact, the impact it has to our associates, the impact it has to our guests.”
The Macks and seven members of the gang were originally charged with 140 felonies. One of the defendants has received a three-year and four-month sentence, while cases against the others are depending on, according to court records.
— CNBC’s Paige Tortorelli, Gabrielle Fonrouge and Courtney Reagan contributed to this anecdote.