A former accounting manager for Karen Kane, Inc., the Vernon-based women's clothing company, has been charged with siphoning more than $2.5 million from the firm over nearly a decade, according to Los Angeles County prosecutors. Donna Faye Bui, 45, is accused of using her sole electronic access to company bank accounts to move roughly $2,562,941 into her own personal accounts between September 2015 and February 2024.
Bui was employed by Karen Kane, Inc. and was responsible for paying the company's bills, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. Prosecutors say she oversaw the company's bank accounts starting in September 2015 and made hundreds of transactions over the roughly ten-year period, structuring the stolen funds into a continuous series of smaller electronic transfers to avoid detection during routine internal checks.
The scheme reportedly came apart in February 2024, when the company's new president undertook an audit of its accounts and noticed suspicious activity, per court documents cited by the DA's office. Karen Kane, Inc. was founded in 1979 out of a Studio City garage by designer Karen Kane and her husband Lonnie Kane, who serves as president and operations director, growing over four decades into a fashion brand sold at department stores including Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's, according to LA Weekly. Since 1991 the company has operated out of a 130,000-to-135,000-square-foot facility in Vernon, employing roughly 160 to 200 workers for design, cutting, printing, and shipping, according to California Apparel News.
106 Felony Counts and Tax Fraud Allegations
Prosecutors charged Bui with 106 felonies in total, including 10 counts of grand theft, 89 counts of money laundering, one count of unauthorized computer access, five counts of filing false tax returns, and one count of failing to file a tax return. She also faces white-collar crime and money laundering enhancements. State tax authorities separately filed six felony tax charges against her for failing to report the $2,562,941 in allegedly stolen income on her California tax returns.
The case is formally charged under Los Angeles County Superior Court case number 26CJCF04447, and Bui faces up to decades in state prison if convicted on all counts and enhancements, the case docket shows. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said stealing millions of dollars from an employer as a trusted employee over more than a decade is a cruel and calculating criminal deception, and he added that white-collar criminals who abuse positions of trust threaten public safety and put companies with electronic bank accounts at risk.
Bail Fight Divides DA's Office and the Court
At her arraignment on August 26, Bui pleaded not guilty and was released on her own recognizance without bail, despite prosecutors requesting $875,000 bail, per the DA's office. Hochman publicly criticized the judge's zero-bail decision, arguing that decade-long white-collar financial crimes cause serious corporate and economic damage and deserve meaningful bail conditions.
Her next court date is set for October 19 in Department 37 at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles, where a date will be set for her preliminary hearing, according to the DA's office.
Part of a Broader Crackdown on Corporate Theft
The DA's office noted that Bui's prosecution comes just weeks after another major Los Angeles embezzlement case, in which former CEO Christopher Butler was ordered to stand trial for allegedly stealing $5.2 million between 2018 and 2025 from The Painted Turtle, a nonprofit camp for children with medical conditions. Hochman took office after winning election in November 2024 on a tough-on-crime platform emphasizing aggressive prosecution of financial crimes, organized theft, and public safety threats, as Hoodline reported at the time.
Karen Kane, Inc. has faced this kind of dispute over financial fraud before. In a 1998 appellate decision stemming from *Karen Kane, Inc. v. Bank of America*, the California Courts of Appeal established that commercial banks do not owe a legal duty of care to non-depositor check drawers to detect internal payee fraud or monitor customer accounts for suspicious activity, according to court records.
