Nail salon owner charged with scheme that bilked fellow Vietnamese immigrants
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Set us as preferred In the San Fernando Valley’s tight-knit Vietnamese community, Thien “Kim” Nguyen was known as a successful entrepreneur.She ran a nail salon in Canoga Park and spoke of dabbling in lucrative sidelines — a car dealership, an import-export business, real estate investments, according to Hua Ma, a San Fernando Valley resident who went into business with Nguyen.
So when Nguyen asked Hua Ma to invest in her nail salon, he agreed.Ma was enticed by a promise of quick returns and encouraged by what seemed like trappings of success, he said in an interview: Nguyen wore Chanel sunglasses, dressed in designer clothes and drove a Tesla.
But what clinched the deal, he said, was the fact he’d known Nguyen’s husband and his extended family for years.“In our culture, you want to know someone, know their family,” Ma said.
Ma brought a bundle of $100 bills to Nguyen’s home in Winnetka, where he took pictures of Nguyen and her husband counting the cash at their dining table, according to Ma and photographs reviewed by The Times.Between multiple instances, Ma lent the couple $105,000 in all, a Los Angeles Police Department detective wrote in an affidavit supporting charges against Nguyen and her husband, Phuc Huynh.
But after receiving three payments totaling $4,900, Ma tried cashing a check from Nguyen, the detective wrote.It bounced.
When Ma asked for his money back, Nguyen told him there wasn’t any, according to the affidavit.Her businesses were underwater.
She had no money to pay him.According to investigators from the LAPD and the California attorney general’s office, Ma was one of a dozen people who gave $1.4 million to Nguyen and her husband, Phuc Huynh.
Most of the money was never repaid, investigators allege.The couple are accused of operating a scheme that targeted fellow Vietnamese immig...