‘Outrageous conduct.’ Salon owner who beat, stabbed, stole from friend gets 15 years
As Thuy Tien Luong stood before U.S. District Judge Ken Bell on Wednesday, the former longtime federal prosecutor gave the Davidson nail salon owner a glimpse of what was to come.
“This is outrageous conduct,” Bell said, according to an observer in the courtroom, “and the victim has every right to hope the court will issue stern punishment.”
Bell did just that, sentencing the longtime owner of Luxury Nails on Jetton Street to 15 years in prison.
Her crime: forced labor.
But the details of her case paint Luong’s two-year wave of terror against a longtime friend and employee in broader and more lurid strokes.
Luong, 38, used her fists, her feet and a broom to repeatedly kick and beat her Vietnamese victim, identified in court documents by the initials K.D. She stabbed and slashed K.D. with the nail tools of her salon.
In another assault cited by prosecutors, Luong ripped out strands of K.D.’s hair, then poured acetone — a solvent used to remove nail polish — into the open wounds, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.
To isolate her victim, prosecutors say, Luong seized K.D.’s credit cards and insurance IDs. She forced the worker to be video-recorded saying insulting things about her own family, which Luong threatened to use against her. She woke up K.D. in the middle of the night with abusive texts and phone calls.
Luong also concocted an inflated dollar amount of supposed financial losses — $180,000 — that she falsely assigned to K.D.’s supposed, on-the-job mistakes. She added $1,000 to the debt, according to documents, every time a customer allegedly complained, and she seized K.D.’s $900 paycheck each week to make sure she got her money.
On June 24, 2018, Luong and her boyfriend went to K.D.’s home and forced her to get into a car, documents show. For the next two hours as they drove around, Luong beat her one-time friend. When K.D. returned home with a broken nose, blackened eyes, a split lip and other injuries, she finally confided to her family about what had been happening at the salon. She and several cousins went to the Davidson police the next day, documents claim.
“Human trafficking is human suffering, and it has no place in modern society,” said U.S. Attorney Dena King, who was in the uptown Charlotte courtroom for Luong’s sentencing.
“As our nation prepares to commemorate Juneteenth, it’s difficult to grasp that there are still people in our communities subjected to a life of servitude, compelled to work long hours for little or no pay, abused physically and mentally by those who ‘employ’ them.”
Members of Luong’s four-attorney defense team did not respond to emails, texts and phone calls from The Charlotte Observer on Wednesday seeking comment.
‘She wouldn’t scream’
Worldwide, the United Nations says more than 40 million workers are believed to be the victims of forced labor, a major component of human trafficking. At least 70 percent of the victims are women or girls. The Department of Homeland Security lists the health and beauty industry as an habitual offender in the country’s forced-labor black market.
Luong was indicted in March 2020 and convicted in January 2021 after a five-day trial.
At least three of her salon customers came forward to report her treatment of her employees. One person, who said she was “in total shock” at Luong’s behavior, secretly photographed injuries to K.D. and Luong’s mother, who also worked at the salon, documents show.
After her June 2018 arrest, Luong lashed out at her own mother, suspecting the older woman of cooperating with investigators, prosecutors alleged.
After a month of constant queries about what her mother had told police, Luong exploded into two days of rage. She kicked, bit and beat her mother with her cell phone, according to documents. She ordered her to slap herself in the mouth until she began to bleed. Otherwise, Luong would do it herself.
Documents describe Luong and K.D. as decade-long friends. But their relationship changed in early 2016 after what appeared to be a generous act. Luong loaned $10,000 to K.D. to cover some of her losses from the failure of her own nail salon, and she invited K.D. to come work for her to pay off the debt.
Luong’s tone soon changed. Prosecutor say the salon owner isolated her from her family and threatened to go to police if K.D. did not repay the fabricated debt. She also began beating her employee whenever she was unhappy about how K.D. did her job.
K.D., who was poorly educated, spoke limited English and did not understand how the local legal system worked, felt trapped and accepted the abuse, documents show.
After one assault, Luong sent a dismissive text about K.D. to her mother. Writing in Vietnamese, she used a vulgar two-word epithet to describe her former friend.
“Even though I beat (her),” Luong said, “she wouldn’t scream loudly in the store.”
In their sentencing memo, prosecutors KImlani Ford and Maryam Zhuravitsky asked Bell for an even tougher sentence of 210 months.
Bell went slightly lower, though he agreed with the government and ordered Luong to pay restitution of almost $75,000.
This story was originally published June 16, 2022 at 6:20 AM.
