A suburban California woman charged with overseeing a retail theft ring that stole $8m in cosmetics from Ulta, Sephora and other stores – before selling them online at Amazon – has quietly pleaded guilty in the case.
Michelle Mack’s guilty plea to charges of organized retail theft and conspiring to commit organized retail theft was first reported on Wednesday in a news release published by the creator of the Queen of the Con podcast, whose upcoming season chronicles Mack and the ruse she acknowledges having run from her mansion near San Diego in Bonsall.
Mack, 53, is tentatively scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday at the state courthouse in downtown San Diego, according to the news release from Queen of the Con’s Johnathan Walton. Her husband, Kenneth Mack, has also pleaded guilty to the same charges and is set to be sentenced alongside her.
From her and Kenneth’s 4,500 sq ft home, which had a vineyard and chapel the couple would rent out for weddings, Michelle Mack recruited a dozen women to go to retail stores and steal specific high-demand makeup products “in bulk” that she would then sell on her Amazon store, California state prosecutors maintained.
Mack’s store sold goods at roughly half their retail price, bringing her almost $2m in 2022 alone – and a total of about $6m in the years before that, prosecutors said.
Authorities found stockpiles of packaged makeup readied “for shipping” at Mack’s home after they caught on to her, according to a criminal complaint filed against her. Investigators ultimately recovered about $400,000 in products from homes at the center of the case with the help of Ulta and Sephora.
Michelle and Kenneth Mack were arrested in December at their estate while their teenage daughters looked on, according to video captured by CNBC.
The pair pleaded not guilty after prosecutors filed charges following up on their arrest. But the couple then reversed that decision and entered guilty pleas on 17 June.
According to a statement included in Walton’s news release and attributed to the defense attorney Scott Tenley, who is a legal analyst for Queen of the Con, the Macks pleaded guilty to the two most serious charges while dozens of other counts – including grand theft and receipt of stolen property – were dismissed.
The Macks also accepted what is known as a white-collar crime enhancement, which under California law “can make the penalties greater” for them, said Tenley, a former federal prosecutor. As a result, they could spend years in state prison and be ordered to pay millions in restitution.
Walton’s news release recounted how the Macks had abandoned their $2m-plus home in the wake of their arrests, leaving their imposing lemon trees so weighed down by unpicked fruit that they are buckling.
He said prosecutors had not publicly discussed the Macks’ guilty pleas as of Wednesday. Walton described learning about the couple’s guilty pleas by chance when he went to the courthouse in June to research records that were part of the case.
“[A] clerk stunned me by conveying that Michelle Mack just pleaded guilty that morning,” he said.
A former television producer, Walton first published Queen of the Con in 2021 with iHeart Radio and AYR Media after a woman who disguised herself as an heiress to a $30m fortune scammed him out of about $100,000. The show helped send her to the UK to face additional charges after she spent some prison time in California.
Queen of the Con’s season on Mack, titled The California Girls, is the show’s sixth. Walton released a trailer for the season on Wednesday.