The spectacular Bonsall home for sale boasts four bedrooms, five bathrooms, a sparkling pool and a wine cellar, and the extensive grounds include a villa, chapel, stone bridge and vineyards.
It also has a four-car garage. It’s also where authorities found thousands of stolen beauty products when they raided the home in December. One investigator described the place as a “mini-store,” but prosecutors say the products were being bought and sold online.
The original occupants were a married couple who have since traded in their wine cellar for a jail cell. Authorities say Michelle and Kenneth Mack were behind a multimillion-dollar theft ring that targeted cosmetics stores, including Ulta Beauty and Sephora. Authorities say the items were sold under the name “Online Makeup Store” on Amazon. The products were supposedly sold for half the retail price.
Authorities said the thefts date back to December 2021 and spanned 21 counties from San Diego to Sonoma, costing the retailer nearly $8 million in losses.
In February, the state attorney general’s office announced charges against the Maxes, along with the women they allegedly hired to steal the items.
“This was a complex, planned and coordinated event, and it calls for and requires a coordinated response, and that’s exactly what you’re seeing here,” Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a press conference at the time.
In June, the Maxes pleaded guilty in San Diego Superior Court to three counts of conspiracy, organized retail theft and receiving stolen property in exchange for sentences of five years and four months each.
Kenneth Mack, 59, was sentenced earlier this month. He will serve the first year of his sentence in prison, but local prison rules mean he will be eligible for release after serving half of that time. The rest of his sentence will be served on probation with community service.
He is scheduled to be released in mid-December, according to online prison records. Michelle Mack, who turned 44 last week, is scheduled to be sentenced a few weeks later, on Jan. 9, and will serve time in state prison rather than prison. Attorneys for the two men did not respond to requests for comment.
The parents, Mr. and Mrs. Mack, will also lose their home, which the court agreed to sell to cover the $3 million they agreed to pay Ulta and Sephora as part of their plea agreement, and funds seized from their bank accounts will also go toward restitution.
The 4,500-square-foot, two-story home was already for sale. The couple put it on the market two months after the raid and just days before the attorney general’s office announced formal charges in mid-February.
At the time, the couple had listed the home for $3.2 million, but the price has since dropped, to $2.75 million as of Friday.
A federal search warrant affidavit sought days after the December raid detailed how agents tracked down the couple. The breakthrough came when alleged gang members were arrested on the East Coast. One of the members testified that he had received instructions from someone in California who offered to pay for his travels to raid specific retailers and steal specific merchandise.
Numbers left on the cellphones of the alleged gang members were associated with Michelle Mack, and messages led investigators to suspect the products were being resold online. Investigators eventually traced them to an online makeup store associated with a post office box in Bonsall associated with Michelle Mack. The products were being sold online at discounted prices. “The significant discounts indicated the products were being resold,” the affidavit states.
According to the affidavit, Amazon sales records show the online makeup store sold about $8 million worth of cosmetics through the site dating back to 2012. Recent court documents show sales from the site totaled about $1.4 million in 2021 and about $1.89 million in 2022.
The packages sent to this post office box are from individuals, including a Pennsylvania resident, who have been arrested on multiple counts of theft, including theft from an Alta store.
Searches of those packages and other locations, including the home of another defendant in the case, uncovered $387,000 worth of stolen goods.
CNBC, which followed the case, reported that investigators began calling the group of thieves the “California Girls” and identified Michelle Mack as the ringleader.
One of the co-defendants was sentenced to three years and four months in prison earlier this year.
