OK, start over.

Andy Huynh got arrested last week after he and his friends allegedly bungled a robbery and while Huynh got away, he left behind his wallet and ID and ended up surrendering himself.

The trio, all 19, are being held on charges of robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and resisting arrest, according to the L.A. Times here.

The three are accused of attempting to rob a market in Covina, California, on 9/21. Huynh was allegedly the getaway driver and waited in the car while the other two, Nicholas Kalscheuer and Nicholas Fiumetto, entered the Baja Ranch Market at about 3pm.

Inside the store, Fiumetto grabbed a 30-pack of Tecate beer and the two men ran out.

They didn’t get too far. Employees of the market chased them and caught Kalscheuer, holding him until the police came.

Fiumetto, meanwhile, threw the beer in the car and jumped in the car.

Huynh pulled out, but he almost hit an employee so this employee jumped on the hood. Huynh careened through the parking lot, hitting a curb and sending the employee onto the pavement, “scraping his arms in the fall” – said the Times.

Huynh and Fiumetto both ran away on foot. Fiumetto jumped the fence and ran into a car wash next door, with police officers chasing after.

So Fiumetto ran into the car wash tunnel.

The car wash manager was there, saw the whole thing, and he told the paper:

“There were two cars being washed in the tunnel,” Pepe Pinedo said. “He got into the wash and the rollers and got all wet.

“By the time, he came out of the car wash, the officer was already on the other end of the tunnel,” he continued. “It was kind of funny. It was a nice show.”

Huynh, meanwhile, got away. But his wallet and ID were in the car. So police called him and convinced him to turn himself in.

Court records show that Huynh’s bail was initially set at $50,000 but afterwards was upped to $80,000. He’s still in jail, way out in Castaic.

Norris Phuoc Nguyen

A Vietnamese-American man trying to get the police to kill him failed and was taken into custody and handed to a hospital for evaluation.

The man, 22-year-old Norris Phuoc Nguyen of Westminster, dressed in jungle fatigues, was spotted walking around 13th Street near the civic center. armed with a rifle. People saw him and called the police.

By the time the police went out to check, the man had arrived at the police station. He tried to open the front door, but the doors to the lobby are locked at 5pm, said police Cpl. Van Woodson in a press release.

From inside, the officer on duty saw the man on the surveillance cameras, and told his colleagues on the outside.

As police went around, the man then “took up a position of concealment.”

Officers persuaded Nguyen to drop his rifle and surrender. “There was no struggle with the subject, no shots were fired, and no one was injured,” the WPD said. The man said he wanted to get himself killed by the officers in a suicide-by-cop scenario.

The WPD credits the officers’ training and tactics for avoiding bloodshed in the case.

Thanh Van Tran's booking photo

A Vietnamese-American man was sentenced Friday to 40 years to life for killing a man who wasn’t doing anything to him at all, after a Tet party in 2009, the OCDA announced in a press release.

Thanh Van Tran, 29, was found guilty in June of one felony count of second degree murder with a sentencing enhancement for the personal discharge of a firearm causing death.

Back in January 2009, Tran attended a Tet party with Loi Van Nguyen, 32, at the now-defunct D’ Saigon restaurant in Garden Grove.

Leaving the party, Nguyen got into an argument with another party-goer. That man’s brother-in-law, Tommy Ngoc Ta, intervened and tried to push Nguyen away.

That’s when Tran got a gun for his car, came up to Ta and shot him 3 times, hitting the 40-year-old man in his arms and in the chest.

So, it’s like this: Tran killed someone in cold blood, when the man wasn’t arguing with him, and in fact wasn’t even arguing with anyone at all.

Ta, a married father of three, died a few hours later at UCI Medical Center.

Nguyen turned himself in, and Tran was arrested.

Nguyen pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of accessory after the fact and was sentenced to one year of probation. He testified in Tran’s trial.

The D’ Saigon restaurant was on Euclid, near Chapman.

Trini and Lynn Ta, may you rest in peace.

In a massacre that has stunned Viets all over, a Texas Vietnamese-American man killed his estranged wife and her family right at his own son’s birthday party.

The North Texas Vietnamese-American community is putting together a fund to help offset medical expenses and to pay for transporting the bodies, according to the Forth Worth Star-Telegram here. The community is also trying to establish a trust fund for the children.

Saturday evening was the son’s 11th birthday party at the Roller World skating rink in Grand Prairie, Texas. As the party wound down, the father Tan Do, 35, pulled out a gun and ordered all children the leave.

Panicked guests fled, and then Tan Do fired on his wife’s entire family.

Within minutes, he killed his estranged wife Trini Ta Do, 29, her sisters Michelle Ta Pham, 28, and Lynn Ta, 16, and a brother, Hien Ta, 21, as well as a sister in law, Thuy Nguyen, 25.

His mother-in-law, Loan Nguyen, his father-in-law, and another brother, 21, were wounded.

Then Tan Do killed himself.

The father-in-law has been released from the hospital; the other two were still hospitalized. The family has a third son, who had been involved in a traffic collision and was already in the hospital.

“He’s probably not going to well enough to attend the funeral services,” said Andy Nguyen, a Tarrant County commissioner who has been helping the family. “There’s just been so much tragedy for this one family.”

The couple’s marriage has become rocky and they have not been living together since December.

Trini Do got a protective order against her husband because he threatened her with a gun three times last year. Three weeks later, though, she asked that it be dismissed, saying, “My husband promised to change and will work on our marriage for the kids,” according to Tarrant County court documents.

According to the Star Telegram here, a fund is being established to offset medical expenses and transportation costs. The Vietnamese-American Community of Tarrant County is also asking for donations to care for the two children whose parents died. Checks can be sent to VAC of Tarrant County, P.O. Box 183821, Arlington, TX 76096. Write “trust fund” in the memo section.

Web site for the defendants' store

A couple and their children are accused of faking marriages to bring slave labor from Vietnam into the U.S. and will face up to 20 years in prison and hundreds of thousands in fine if convicted, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Arizona announced.

Arrested in the case are the owners of the I Do, I Do Wedding Boutique in Flagstaff: Mom Huong Thi “Kelly” McReynolds, 58; Dad James Hartful McReynolds, 60; and sons Joseph Minh McReynolds, 36; and Vincent Minh McReynolds, 32.

Mom and Dad are accused of faking a divorce so they could go to Vietnam and do sham marriages with Vietnamese people. The two sons are accused of doing sham marriages with Vietnamese women too.

Allegedly, the Vietnamese victims were brought to the United States, and then were forced into slavery as indentured servants to the family, toiling away at the home and at the wedding store.

Mom and Dad’s divorce was fake; they still lived together as husband and wife. As to son Joseph, he was living with a U.S. citizen and had children by her, both before and during the sham marriage to his Vietnamese victim.

After the family’s arrest, the U.S. Marshals took over running the bridal store, to make sure brides and grooms are not left high and dry because of the case. (As usual, customers were shocked, shocked I say, to find the nice people they’d been dealing with were accused criminals – says local TV Channel 3 here.)

“The defendants created a climate of fear inside their home and business by carrying firearms, berating the victims and threatening to physically harm them and shame their families in Vietnam,” U.S. Attorney Dennis K. Burke was quoted in the press release. “They weren’t just exploited for their labor, they were robbed of their basic human dignity.”

The case resulted from a two-year investigation dubbed “Operation Broken Promises,” conducted jointly by ICE, FIB, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the U.S. Marshal’s Service.

ICE Special Agent Matt Allen accused the McReynolds of “engag[ing] in modern-day slavery to support their business and live an easy life on the backs of these exploited victims.”

Following is the press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office for the district of Arizona:

I mean, if you read Vietnamese, you can check out this Google search page and see the 1,120,000 results for “cắt của quý” – a common phrase used in newspapers in Vietnam to describe that particular act of bodily severance.

Mrs. Becker, nee Kieu

With 1.1 million suggestions, sooner or later that behavior would get itself imported to the OC, and, here it is: Viet wife Catherine Kieu Becker was arrested Monday night for chopping off her husband’s peewee and feeding it to the garbage disposal.

When police came, according to the OC Register, they found Mr. Becker “tied to the bed and bleeding from his groin.” He went to emergency surgery at UCI and is listed in serious condition.

And why would Mrs. Becker, who still formally go by her maiden name Kieu, do a thing like that?

Because he “deserves it,” she told police. The 48-year-old is being held on a $1 million bail and is due in court on Wednesday.

It is unclear exactly what he did to deserve it, but that information may provide a useful metric to predict who’s next…

Daryl Nguyen's Facebook picture

A Vietnamese-American official of a San Jose nonprofit has been accused of stealing more than $160,000 by billing supplies to a phony company and coercing employees to falsify overtime hours, reports the Mercury News here.

Daryl Nguyen, 41, was arrested Thursday after surrending to authorities. He has been charged with two counts of grand theft by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.

Nguyen, according to his old LinkedIn profile, was a Program Director at Health Trust. He was in charge of Wellness Access and Education.

“They are a nonprofit that does good work in the community,” Campbell police Capt. Dave Carmichael said. “They help people with Meals on Wheels and AIDS services. They do quite a bit of outreach in the community. It’s unfortunate such a good organization was victimized by Mr. Nguyen, and we’re hopeful this investigation and arrest will hopefully lead to some restitution.”

The police claims Nguyen set up a company called California Creatives, and submitted check requests to Health Trust for marketing materials and other supplies the company never made.

Later, to fill inventory, Nguyen allegedly ordered the same materials from a legitimate company, making Health Trust pay again.

Nguyen is also accused of making two of his employees file false overtime time cards. According to a Health Trust spokeswoman, he allegedly made them fill out overtime, get paid, then pay him back.

“He was very clever and he made excuses for why they should help him with this,” the spokeswoman said. Some of the excuses were, allegedly: “He didn’t have enough money in his budget to serve all the clients; he wanted to make contributions to a nonprofit.”

Health Trust investigated the overtime in early 2010 after employees came forward. Health Trust hired an outside investigator and found out about California Creatives.

GGPD Lt. Jeff Nightengale shows off cash (on table) and gambling machines seized at Viet cafes, bars and pool halls. Photo by Linh Nguyen/Nguoi Viet

Viet cafe, bar and pool hall owners installed gambling machines with special switches that flip to something legal whenever inspectors come. That’s clever.

But not clever enough to escape arrest.

Police from both Garden Grove and Westminster conduct a joint sweep of cafes, bars and pool halls, seizing hundreds of illegal gambling machines and hundreds of thousands in cash.

Practically all businesses raided are Vietnamese, 23 in Garden Grove and 5 in Westminster. The ones in Westminster are named in a memo sent by WPD Chief Ron Coopman to the Mayor and City Council, here.

Police arrested 23 people and seized 183 machines and $145,000 in cash.

“The gambling easily leads to robbery, other crimes,” GGPD Chief Kevin Raney said in a press conference Wednesday.

The blackjack, poker, and other gambling machines have dual settings, one setting that’s legal and one that’s illegal.

The cafe owners have a switch that would flip the games to the legal side, whenever cops come to inspect, and whenever they leave, flip it back to the illegal gambling side.

“You can play blackjack for up to $50 per hand” on these machines, GGPD Lieutenant Jeff Nightengale said. “The businesses would pay you out at the end of the night, just like in Las Vegas.”

More illegal gaming machines, in U-Haul truck. Photo by Linh Nguyen/Nguoi Viet.

The $145,000 seized was part of the money used to pay gamblers at the end of the night.

The money still in the machines are not counted yet. One undercover police officer, still wearing a ski mask at the press conference, said the money in the machines may add up to another $100,000.

The raid was conducted on Tuesday night with more than 110 officers from both WPD and GGPD participating.

The investigation itself involves 8 police departments, the California DOJ, the California Franchise Tax Board and also the FBI.