A Lake County judge has ordered a 20-year-old Baltimore man held without release pending trial, after prosecutors said he served as lookout while two women cleared out nearly $16,000 in Dior cosmetics from a Deer Park Sephora in roughly five minutes, then allegedly moved on to hit two more Sephora stores the same day.
Francesco Bambaloi faces one count of burglary, a Class 2 felony, and one count of retail theft, a Class 3 felony, in connection with the August 2025 theft at the Sephora inside Deer Park Town Center, according to Lake and McHenry County Scanner. Prosecutors allege that two females and a male entered the store around 5:22 p.m. on August 12, 2025, with the women placing display items and emptying inventory drawers into shopping bags while Bambaloi kept watch, and that the group left without paying around 5:27 p.m., about five minutes after walking in.
A store loss prevention officer told deputies the same three people were behind similar thefts the same day at Sephora locations in Schaumburg and at Old Orchard mall in Skokie, the outlet reports. A Lake County Sheriff's Office detective later received reports and surveillance video from Skokie police describing three people fleeing the scene in a maroon Dodge Grand Caravan.
Flock Cameras and a Felony Vehicle Alert Tie the Case Together
Investigators identified the suspect vehicle as a 2019 maroon Dodge Grand Caravan, the same vehicle that Plymouth Township police in Michigan flagged as a felony vehicle on August 18, 2025, after two females allegedly stole cosmetics in that jurisdiction. A Plymouth Township sergeant told the Lake County detective that cosmetics had similarly gone missing from stores in that area, and per the same account, Flock license plate-reader hits for the Dodge matched the date, time and location of both the Deer Park and Skokie thefts.
The group is alleged to have gone on to steal from retail stores in Michigan, Missouri and Minnesota in addition to Illinois. At some point after August 27, 2025, police in Brownsburg, Indiana, stopped the Dodge with Bambaloi, co-defendant Grifina Ciucur and a juvenile inside. A U.S. Border Patrol agent, the Plymouth Township sergeant and a Brownsburg police officer then worked together to positively identify the three as the people who allegedly stole from the Deer Park Sephora, per the outlet's reporting.
Prosecutor Cites Flight Risk in Push for Detention
Lake County Assistant State's Attorney Elizabeth Cannon argued that Bambaloi had no ties to Illinois and no local residence available for electronic monitoring or a curfew, saying the group traveled quickly and committed new offenses in different states. Cannon described Bambaloi's conduct as repeated behavior intended to evade police and thwart prosecution, which she said amounted to willful flight. Lake County Judge Michael Nerheim granted the state's detention petition, ordering Bambaloi held pending trial after finding the allegations involved similar crimes across state lines in multiple jurisdictions.
Nerheim said the case appeared to involve a pre-planned operation carried out with two other accomplices, with about $16,000 in merchandise taken from the Deer Park store. Defense attorney Gregg Wolpoff pushed back, arguing that many of the warrants attached to Bambaloi were issued while he was already in custody and that it was unclear whether he even knew about them. Wolpoff asked that Bambaloi be released with conditions, noting he cares for two children and has a permanent residence in Baltimore, and suggested he could instead live with an uncle in Carpentersville while the case proceeded.
Bambaloi Says He Barely Knows Illinois
Bambaloi told the court he had been in Illinois only once before, for about a week roughly two and a half years earlier, and said he was unaware of his other outstanding warrants and had always cooperated with authorities. He also said a prior case out of California stemmed from an offense committed as a juvenile, that he completed probation, and that the case had been closed for years. Bambaloi has pleaded not guilty and waived his preliminary hearing, per the outlet, which also reports he faces separate theft charges in Hennepin County, Minnesota, tied to a September 3, 2025, incident at the Mall of America Sephora in Bloomington, plus a second Hennepin County case accusing him of aiding and abetting theft after three people entered the Sephora at Ridgedale Mall in Minnetonka on August 14, 2025.
Eryka Jones, another attorney involved in the case, described the situation as a multi-state operation rather than a simple county-to-county matter, saying the group could drive between states to commit offenses while Bambaloi was passed among jurisdictions holding active warrants. Nerheim noted that the allegations centered on similar crimes committed across state lines in multiple jurisdictions, not merely the existence of the warrants themselves. The Lake County Public Defender's Office withdrew from the case, and Bambaloi is now represented by attorney Robert T. Ritacca.
According to the Scanner, a case management conference is scheduled for Wednesday and a jury trial is set for November 16, though those remain scheduled dates rather than confirmed outcomes.
Case Fits a Broader Pattern of Organized Retail Theft
The Deer Park case lands amid a documented rise in violent retail crime statewide. Violent retail crime statewide rose 7% over the previous year, according to a report from the Illinois Organized Retail Crime Association cited by CBS News Chicago, which also reported that the association found 10% of offenders are responsible for more than 63% of retail crime statewide. Illinois retailers are estimated to lose more than $2 billion annually to theft, per the same report, whose data was drawn from Auror, an intelligence platform retailers and police use to share information on retail crime incidents. The Cook County State's Attorney's Office charged 1,073 retail-theft cases in 2024 and 2,585 in 2025, according to the station's reporting.
