Bolsavik.com

In a perverse case of life imitating art badly, a Viet woman has pleaded guilty to taking millions in investor money and gambling it all away in high-stake casino games, reports the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune here.

The government, however, apparently extracted guilty pleas from Kalin Dao, 32, by making threats against her parents. Dao’s plea statement made no mention of anything her parents did, and yet a guilty plea by her parents is part of the government’s conditions. There is no reported evidence of the role if any Dao’s parents played in the scheme.

The scheme itself is ridiculously simple - and troubling. “I know shady people” seems to be essentially what Dao said to get investors to pitch in up to $10 million.

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Proving once again that Vietnamese smoke too much, a Viet man used a sword to rob a Dallas-area 7-Eleven of money and cigarettes, reports the McKinney Courier-Gazette here.

Police was called to a 7-Eleven in McKinney, Texas, after a sword-wielding man dressed in black robbed the place at about 2:41 a.m. on Wednesday.

The knight-in-black allegedly demanded money and cigarettes.

Just four minutes later, police spotted Phong Thanh Nguyen, 22 (pictured), driving a car matching exactly the description and license plate as reported by the store clerk.

They discovered a sword, money and merchandise in the car and took him in.

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Soon-to-be placed in “round black filing system”

The Nguoi Viet lawsuit never went into its damages phase because the protestors threw in the towel.

On Wednesday morning when the damages phase was supposed to begin, Ky Ngo, Trong Doan and Cung Tran (in Vietnamese: Ngô Kỷ, Đoàn Trọng, Trần Thế Cung) resumed settlement talk instead of having to hear evidence of how destructive they’ve been.

The parties arrived at a stipulated judgment whereby the protestors promised they would pack up and go home.

This is not at all surprising to the Bolsavik, who has said at least twice before (here and here) that Ky Ngo and his gang are showing signs of fatigue.

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The Vietnamese who has been on the Rosemead City Council since 2005, serving as Mayor since 2007, has lost his seat by one vote and conceded defeat after a recount and a lawsuit, reports the Los Angeles Times here.

Elected to the city council on the same election that voted out John Tran, 33 (pictured), was another Viet, Steven Ly, 24.

Tran’s frequent adversary on the city council is former Mayor Margaret Clark. Steven Ly (like the Bolsavik a Bruin) is an ally of Clark’s and campaigned pretty much on her slate.

On election night March 3, with three seats available, Tran found himself in fourth place, behind by 30 votes. Ly was second. The third place finisher ahead of Tran was Sandra Armenta.

Tran paid for a hand recount and gained 25 votes.

He then went to court to seek to count 112 absentee ballots that had been disqualified because the signatures on the ballot were different from the signatures on file. Tran was represented by the same lawyer who worked the OC Supervisor recount. More on this later.

After the recount and while the lawsuit was pending, the council seated Clark, Ly and Armenta. The same day the new councilmembers were sworn in, they voted to halt all approvals of mixed-used development - a key Tran initiative as councilmember.

And then, in an action worthy of any good Hong Kong flick, they fired the City Manager.

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The three main characters in the long-running protest against Nguoi Viet Daily News have been found liable in the lawsuit filed by the paper, a jury in the Orange County Superior Court today. Trial will continue tomorrow with the damages phase.

Ky Ngo, Trong Doan and Cung The Tran (in Vietnamese: Ngô Kỷ, Đoàn Trọng, Trần Thế Cung) — all of whom deny being the leaders of what they term the “spontaneous” protest, were found liable after just a few hours of jury deliberation. (Ky Ngo, in particular, uses the term “spontaneous protest” - “biểu tình tự phát” in Vietnamese - so often that he even takes to employing the abbreviation ”BTTP” in his emails.)

Ngo, Doan and Tran were all found liable for interference with business and for nuisance. Ngo and Doan were in addition found liable for trespass.

For the first few days of trial, Cung The Tran came to court on crutches. Perhaps expecting a favorable outcome, Tran walked in unaided today to the jury’s verdict reading.

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The binnual Vietnamese-American National Gala - an event that has the cleverly coined which means “gold” in Vietnamese - is taking place in Beverly Hills this week-end.

This year marks the 5th VANG (website here), a gathering of the young and successful Vietnamese from throughout the country. Starting its first year as a shindig to celebrate successful businesses, the event has since expanded and taken on more substantive matters.

This year’s program, for example, include panels of non-profit working, and on empowering the community through politics and law. Many local politicians were invited, including Assemblyman Van Tran, Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen, and Garden Grove School Board member Kim-Oanh Nguyen-Lam.

As a member of the organizing group John D. Tran, Esq. told the Bolsavik, Janet was invited but couldn’t make it. Van initially accepted but had to pull out due to scheduling conflict. That left Nguyen-Lam with a captive audience.

With its high ticket price, VANG has been dogged with a reputation of being elitist. This year, VANG apparently tried to soften it by making the Leadership Summit yesterday free to all students. The gala tonight remains a $250-a-head party - but, if you say you’re with the Vietnamese-American Bar Association, you can go in at $100 per.

VANG retains vestiges of a fun event for those that can afford it. On calendar for this year: A guided shopping trip down Rodeo Drive.

A book by a Viet author and professor at the Bolsavik’s alma mater, about growing up Vietnamese in a Midwestern town, has been selected “Great American Read” by the Michigan Humanities Council, reports the Detroit News here.

This is not the first honor for Bich Minh Nguyen, 34, a native of Vietnam who grew up in Grand Rapids. Her book “Stealing Buddha’s Dinner” has won a number of other prestigious awards including PEN/Jerard Award from the PEN American Center and Best Book of 2007 by the Chicago Tribune.

Being named “Great American Read,” however, has been compared by the Michigan NPR affiliate Michigan Radio here to being chosen by a giant state-wide book club, where everybody in the state reads the same book. It is a definite boost to sales, at least in Michigan.

Stealing Buddha’s Dinner is ostensibly a memoir. Its chapters are more like a series of essays that can be read separately. The author was barely 8 months old when her father and his mother (the author’s grandmother) took her, her sister, and several uncles on a ship and escaped the communist invasion to arrive at Guam, then to a refugee camp at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, and finally to Grand Rapids. The family would later enlarge to include the author’s stepmother and her little half brother.

“We arrived in Grand Rapids with five dollars and a knapsack of clothes. Mr. Heidenga, our sponsor, set us up with a rental house, some groceries — boxed rice, egg noodles, cans of green beans — and gave us dresses his daughters had outgrown.” Thus began the first essay and the book.

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A Vietnamese man from Virginia accused of falsely labeling imported fish has been sentenced in federal court in Los Angeles to 5 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $12 million in unpaid duties, reports Courthouse News Service here.

Peter Xuong Lam, 49, former president of Virginia Star Seafood Corp., was among a dozen people and companies convicted of importing mislabeled fish to avoid federal tariffs.

Another man involved in the scheme, 64-year-old Arthur Yavelberg, was sentenced to 1 year of probation.

The alleged organizer of the conspiracy and real boss of the company, Henry Nguyen, is a fugitive and is believed to be in Vietnam.

Henry’s father Kich Nguyen owns the company that exports these fish from Vietnam: Cafatex - whose subsidiaries include Binh Dinh, Antesco and Anhaco.

According to a source of the Bolsavik’s familiar with the Vietnamese catfish industry, an executive of another Vietnamese company was also detained in Belgium while there to attend a business fair. The Belgians, however, eventually declined to extradite him to the U.S. and he returned to Vietnam safely. Allegedly, that other company was also implicated in this same case.

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Remember the Bolsavik was telling you here that the boat-people documentary “Bolinao 52″ was nominated for regional Emmy in two categories?

Well, it won both. Yep, two nominations, two wins.

The film, directed by first-time director Duc Nguyen, won the Outstanding Achievement in Documnetary award. It also won the Outstanding Music Composition award for the original score by Mark Izu. Pictured right is Duc with Mai-Phuong Nguyen, MD, his wife and the film’s producer/publicist.

In his acceptance speech, Duc Nguyen dedicated the award to his mentor and the “Mother of Asian American Film” Loni Ding, Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, who is recovery from a severe stroke. Nguyen also dedicated the award to the 2.0 million Vietnamese boat people around the world who, the film’s blog says here, “remind us of the ‘high price of freedom.’”

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Nguyễn Huy Vũ (1975-2009)

A Viet man whom the Bolsavik considers if not the best then certainly one of the best Vietnamese-American journalists, has passed away on Friday night as a result of a heart attack.

Vu Huy Nguyen, 34, who often wrote his byline the Vietnamese way Nguyen Huy Vu, suffered a heart attack while playing soccer on Sunday and slipped into a coma from which doctors said he would not be able to recover.

Last night, surrounded by friends, his family made the painful and heartbreaking choice of turning off Vu’s artificial life support.

Vu came to the U.S. as a 2-month-old baby, clutched in the arms of his father Chuyen Nguyen, a community leader and former aide to State Senator Joe Dunn.

Over the years, Vu has proven himself to be an awesome journalist, both ardent and levelheaded. Vu was one of the main people featured in the documentary film “Saigon U.S.A.”

As an intern at the OC Weekly, Vu covered the the Hi-Tek flag protests, and wrote a passionate essay (here) explaining to the world at large exactly why Vietnamese, despite all their differences about everything else, are anti-communist.

While still an intern, Vu won a share of the OC Press Club Award for an investigative report on the toxic effects of the Disneyland fireworks shows.

Vu then went on to work at the Seattle Times, the OC Register, the AP. Vu also wrote occasionally for Nguoi Viet 2, the English-language supplement to the Nguoi Viet Daily News.

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