A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
It is a familiar experience for anyone that's walked through an American mall - a friendly salesperson standing outside of a store or a kiosk. They want to give you a free sample of skin cream. Pretty harmless, right? Well, NPR investigations found a scheme that is far from harmless - high-pressure sales tactics, overcharging, evidence of immigration and labor violations. Monika Evstatieva and Caley Fox Shannon worked on this investigation for more than a year. So, Mo, let's start with you. How did the story even begin?
MONIKA EVSTATIEVA, BYLINE: Yeah, A. We got a tip from a customer who was walking in an Ann Arbor mall. A salesperson handed her eye-cream sample. Then she goes into the store. She walks out with a bag of products, and they charged her $5,000.
MARTÍNEZ: Wow.
EVSTATIEVA: She couldn't return the products. She didn't even want them. She tried to resist buying them. Then her daughter posted about her experience in Facebook, and there were so many other people who shared the same experience. So me and Caley started looking whether this is something that's happening only in Ann Arbor, or is it nationwide? And we found out hundreds of customers who had the same experiences. And the thing that they all had in common is that the distributor of these products is a group called Mazal Group. The company is based in California, and the owner is from Israel.
MARTÍNEZ: The Mazal Group. Caley, what's the role of that company?
CALEY FOX SHANNON, BYLINE: Mazal Group is a distributor for about two dozen skincare brands that we just kept seeing come up again and again in consumer complaints - and we read hundreds of them - for stores across the country. Now, this company claims they're just a drop shipper, and anything that happens at the store level or involved with the brands isn't up to them.
But we learned that one family owns all of these brands in stores that are getting complaints. And they manage the operations of the brands through Mazal Group, which is owned by one of the same family members. There's been reporting on these types of stores in the past, and I should say the store locations themselves are independently owned. But they're buying these skincare products that are getting complaints always from Mazal Group. And so here, Mo and I connected the dots between different stores across the country, all the way from Hawaii to New Mexico to Michigan and, it feels like, everywhere in between.
MARTÍNEZ: How have they been able to get away with this for so long?
EVSTATIEVA: So over a decade ago, actually, there were federal investigations into Israeli-owned skincare stores operating on the East Coast. And those investigations were pretty successful. They managed to get those store owners to serve time in prison. They deported so many different people who worked there because they were Israeli nationals who were working here on tourist visas without work authorization. But what we were able to uncover is that this immigration fraud is actually still going on today, and stores that sell Mazal Group products have people that work in them that don't have work authorization.
MARTÍNEZ: Caley, you looked into stores in different states. I mean, how big is this problem?
SHANNON: Yeah. At one point, I found myself trying to make a list, and I just had to stop myself because there are so many of these stores. And five former employees from Mazal Group agreed to speak with us on condition of anonymity. They were worried about retaliation. One longtime former employee told us it could be as many as 2,000 stores worldwide. And we also found they often close down pretty quickly. They'll pack up shop when they start to get too many complaints. And oftentimes they'll just reopen in another part of town with a new name, or sometimes even in the same mall, selling another brand also distributed by Mazal Group.
And just last month, we actually discovered that Mazal Group terminated its business license in California in September. And at the same address, with the same ownership, is another company - a beauty distribution brand called Innovation Brands.
MARTÍNEZ: Monika Evstatieva and Caley Fox Shannon, thank you very much.
EVSTATIEVA: Thanks, A.
SHANNON: Thank you.
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