The California mom who pleaded guilty to running an organized retail crime ring that stole millions of dollars in beauty products from Ulta Beauty and Sephora to resell on Amazon will now have to pay those retailers back as part of her sentence.
Michelle Mack, who began her five-year prison sentence on Jan. 9 following her arrest outside of San Diego in December 2023, was ordered to pay $3 million in restitution to Ulta, Sephora and a number of other retailers after striking a plea deal with prosecutors last year.
As part of the deal, Mack, 54, forfeited her 4,500-square-foot mansion in Bonsall, California, which was sold in December for $2.35 million, property records show.
Any funds left from the sale, after bank debts were satisfied, will go toward restitution, while Mack and her husband Kenneth Mack, 60, will pay back the remainder “over time,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office said.
It’s not clear if Mack had a mortgage on the property, but she originally purchased it for $2.29 million in 2021, according to property records.
It’s also not clear how the restitution will be divvied up among Mack’s victims. The crime ring she admitted to running primarily targeted Ulta stores, but it stole from other retailers, including Sephora.
When compared with the net income that retailers like Ulta bring in annually, the restitution is likely a drop in the bucket — but it would still be a small windfall. Ulta declined to comment on the restitution, including how it would use the funds or account for them in financial statements. The company did say it was proud to have partnered with law enforcement officials on the investigation and was grateful for their efforts.
“This case demonstrates that through close partnerships between retailers, law enforcement and prosecutors, as well as legislative support, we can make a meaningful impact on organized retail crime and hold the criminals perpetuating this problem accountable,” Dan Petrousek, senior vice president of loss prevention at Ulta Beauty, said in a statement.
Sephora didn’t return a request for comment.
David Johnston, vice president of asset protection and retail operations at the National Retail Federation, said restitution is common for retailers, victimized by theft, but the amounts only recently started reaching the millions.
“The level of theft … has not been as substantial and as commonplace as we’ve seen over the last, you know, four years or so,” said Johnston. “This is going to be what we would expect to see when we start to get these organized retail crime groups through the judicial process. It is a substantial amount of loss, a complex organization, which involves a number of individuals, and then sentencing and restitution that meet the crime.”
He cautioned that restitution rarely makes up for a retailers’ lost income in full, and it can take years for a defendant to pay back the fines entirely.
“Restitution is part of the judicial process, but it does not guarantee that the victim will receive all or any funds,” said Johnston. “It’s dependent upon the ability to obtain that restitution from the offender and the process in which that restitution is in fact paid and shared across multiple victims.”
Last year, Bonta filed a slew of felony charges against Mack and her husband, alleging they ran what his office called a sprawling retail crime ring that led to an estimated $8 million in stolen beauty products, CNBC previously reported. The operation spanned at least a dozen states, CNBC reported.
Mack wasn’t accused of stealing the products herself. Instead, police said she recruited a crew of young women to take the items so she could resell the products on her Amazon storefront for a fraction of their retail price.
The investigation, led by the California Highway Patrol, gained national attention and revealed the sophisticated nature behind some retail crime rings and how bad actors can use online marketplaces to sell stolen products.
Last summer, Mack was sentenced to five years and four months in state prison, but was given a delayed sentence that began this month. Mack’s husband, Kenneth, was also sentenced in connection with the case, so the judge agreed to postpone her sentence so she could care for their children while Kenneth was incarcerated.
Additional reporting by Scott Zamost and Courtney Reagan