Michelle Mack will be taken into custody on December 6, 2023.
CNBC
The mastermind behind a nationwide ring of organized retail crime. Ulta Beauty and other major retailers face sentences of more than five years in California prison.
Michelle Mack, of Bonsall, California, received a deferred sentence of five years and four months, to be formally determined in January. The sentence was handed down Thursday by a San Diego County Superior Court judge.
Her husband, Kenneth, is also serving the same sentence and is already incarcerated. As part of the plea deal, he will be released after a year and then served the remainder of his sentence on probation and community service.
A judge allowed Mack to serve her sentence so she could care for her children after her husband’s release, and she was ordered not to travel out of state or near Ulta or Sephora stores.
According to the judgment, the couple must also pay $3 million in damages to Ulta and Sephora.
Michelle Mack led the theft ring from a 4,500-square-foot mansion in the San Diego suburb of Bonsall, and authorities say she oversaw a network of about a dozen people who stole millions of dollars’ worth of merchandise from major retailers including Ulta and Sephora.
The Maxxes pleaded guilty last month to felony conspiracy, organized retail theft, petty theft and receiving stolen property.
According to NBC 7 San Diego, an attorney for Max and his wife declined to comment.
A CNBC investigation in March detailed Mack’s operations and shed light on how law enforcement can track items stolen from organized retail organizations.
Investigators began to refer to the ring of thieves as the “California Girls” and identified Mack as their ringleader, making millions of dollars by reselling the stolen goods. Amazon Investigators said that before she and her husband were arrested in December, they sold makeup products to unsuspecting customers through an “online cosmetics store” at a fraction of the normal retail price.
According to Amazon sales records provided to investigators, Mack sold nearly $8 million in cosmetics since 2012 before the stores closed, earning $1.89 million in revenue in 2022 alone.
The site was shut down after the arrests in December.
“There’s certainly a financial impact, but far more important is the human impact — the impact on employees and customers,” Ulta Beauty CEO Dave Kimbell said in a lengthy CNBC interview about organized retail crime earlier this year.
The Macks and seven of their crew members were originally charged with 140 felony counts. One of the defendants was sentenced to three years and four months in prison, according to court records, and cases against the others are pending.
—CNBC’s Paige Tortorelli, Gabriel Fonrouge and Courtney Reagan contributed to this story.
