Sephora robbery: Shoplifters ransack Los Cerritors Center’s beauty store as employees look on

A trio of brazen shoplifters were videotaped openly emptying out the shelves inside a Sephora make-up store in Los Angeles, California, on Saturday, May 28, as stunned bystanders only watched in astonishment. This incident is yet another addition to the nation's ongoing shoplifting crisis.

The video was posted to TikTok by a beauty influencer, Jessica Ortiz (@jessleetv), a day after the robbery, on Sunday, May 29. The clip went viral in no time, garnering over 19.9 million views and 2.3 million likes as of writing.

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Viral clip shows three thieves brazenly shoplifting at a Sephora store

The 47-second clip showed the three perpetrators, two men and a woman, donning hoodies and grabbing various products off the shelves before stuffing them into black trash bags.

The caper occurred at 9 pm on Saturday, May 28, at the Sephora shop in the Los Cerritos Center mall. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department reported that it was one of several such occurrences recorded in the neighborhood that night. They added that a Forever 21 outlet at the same mall was the first establishment to be targeted, followed by Sephora.

Jessica Ortiz's TikTok capturing the alleged heist was captioned with the following in-video text:

“I was just trying to pick out concealer then I heard a BANG…..CERRITOS MALL 5/28 at 8:50 PM."

As Ortiz recorded the theft occurring before her, she could be heard reacting:

“Oh, my God. Oh, my f**king God. F**king lowlifes.”

What shocked most viewers about the clip was how nonchalant the perpetrators appeared to be, ransacking the store's shelves at a leisurely pace that's never associated with such robberies. Two Sephora store employees also watched the scene play out passively, without lifting a finger. The robbery only lasted about three minutes.

The employees only made a move to chase the shoplifters as they were fleeing the store with their loot. The Los Cerritos Center employees reported that the thieves got away with an estimated $27,000 worth of Sephora merchandise.

While the beauty brand initially declined to file a police report, they thought better of it and filed a report on Monday, as per the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Officers are still trying to apprehend the three unidentified shoplifters.

Investigators reported that the Sephora manager had told them that this was the third time this trio had ripped them off. However, this was only the first time that the employees reported the shoplifting to the police.

This comes as shoplifting incidents in major cities around the country are on the rise. Robberies have increased significantly in Los Angeles after the implementation of a contentious zero-bail policy.

The Bail Project's zero-dollar bail policy, implemented during the pandemic to alleviate prison crowding, has resulted in suspects being rapidly released from detention after being arrested and charged for misdemeanours and low-level felonies in California. According to critics, this approach has incentivized thieves to commit crimes instead.

While supporters of the new policy claim it has reduced recidivism among criminal offenders, crime rates in the city and state have continued to rise, with more instances of smash-and-grab burglaries. According to LAPD data, robberies in Los Angeles have skyrocketed by 17.2% between March 2022 and the same time last year.