Nail salon staff tried to burn down competing salon with ‘incendiary device,’ feds say

A nail salon owner will serve jail time for her role in a plot to set her competitor’s business on fire, Ohio officials announced.

Kim Lien Vu, 46, of Liberty Township, and her employee, Cierra Marie Bishop, 30, of Hamilton, devised a plan to set a competing nail salon on fire after Vu “developed animosity” toward them, according to an April 25 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office announcing Vu’s sentencing.



McClatchy News was unable to locate attorney information for Vu.

To carry out the plan, which the women referred to as “Job 1” in text messages, Bishop built a “remote-controlled incendiary device” that they planned to plant at Bora Bora Nail Salon in Monroe, officials said.

Vu and Bishop enlisted the help of a 19-year-old friend who made an appointment for a pedicure at on Feb. 5 2023 at the competitor’s salon under an alias, federal prosecutors said.

Surveillance footage shows Bishop entering the salon while her friend’s appointment was underway and placing the device in the box under a desk in the back of the building, according to officials.

Prosecutors said an employee later discovered the device, which reportedly smelled like gasoline, and brought it outside. When she later went to check on the device, the box was on fire.

Although Vu was traveling to Virginia on the day the plan was being executed, she “was in constant contact with Bishop,” officials said.

All three women were indicted in February 2023, according to officials.

Vu pleaded guilty in September 2023 to charges of conspiring to commit malicious destruction via fire, and on April 24, she was sentenced to four years in prison, prosecutors said.

Bishop has also pleaded guilty and is currently awaiting sentencing, officials said.

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