Charges: Lululemon shoplifting operation ran for months through nail salon

Two Crystal women allegedly orchestrated thousands of dollars worth of thefts over several months from a Lululemon store in Minneapolis before moving the stolen goods through a nail salon and selling the items.

Roommates My Hoang Thi Van, 56, and Kathy Nguyen, 24, each face one felony count of organized retail theft in Hennepin County after Minneapolis police tracked their movements following a tip from corporate investigators for the high-end athletic retailer.

According to the charges:

After Lululemon corporate investigators found high losses from theft at a store in the North Loop neighborhood of Minneapolis, they identified a suspect through surveillance videos and interviews with store employees.

The woman, who the Star Tribune is not identifying because she hasn’t been charged in the case, tended to steal bags off the wall, fill them with merchandise and leave without paying. Investigators placed GPS theft tags inside bags at the store, and when she stole them, Minneapolis police began tracking her movements and noticed a pattern.

The woman would take the stolen merchandise to Diamond Nails Salon in Crystal, then leave the salon without the bags but holding a “large sum of money in her hand.” The bags remained at the salon for several hours before being taken to a house on the 5000 block of Bass Lake Road in Crystal.

When the shoplifter stole again from Lululemon, police arrested her. She said she had been directed to steal the clothes by a woman she knew as “Phong” and who worked at Diamond Nails Salon. When police showed her a photo of Van, the woman said that was the person she knew as “Phong.”

The shoplifter said Van would pay her $400 for the clothes and remove the theft sensors, place the stolen merchandise in a garbage bag and resell it. She estimated she had done this at least 100 times with Van.

Police obtained search warrants for Diamond Nails, Van’s vehicle and the house on Bass Lake Road.

Police identified Van leaving the salon with several garbage bags that appeared to be full of clothes. They stopped her en route to her home with the bags in her car. As they surveilled the house, they noticed “two females and a male quickly removing numerous white plastic bags of merchandise from the residence.”

They identified Nguyen as one of the women and learned that the man was Nguyen’s brother. He told police that his sister was panicked when she arrived home and asked him to help her remove the bags from the house. Police found “numerous white plastic bags of stolen Lululemon merchandise throughout the residence.”

Van said in a statement she began buying clothes from Lululemon in May and had been doing it for three months. She also acknowledged directing the shoplifter to steal specific items she had seen on the Lululemon website.

The total value of merchandise stolen is being determined. Van and Nguyen were due to appear in Hennepin County District Court on Friday.