A CROOKED Greenock businessman who was caught employing illegal workers in a town centre nail bar has been told he must stump up £1,000 every month for a year – or go to prison.

Vietnamese-born Minh Hung Hoang was discovered on two separate occasions of providing fraudulent jobs to people from his homeland at his USA Nails and Beauty premises in Westburn Street.

The 54-year-old’s repeated criminal business practices came to light following intelligence-led immigration raids on his pampering parlour by police and UK customs officers in July and October last year.

Hoang was on the premises on both occasions when three people were engaged in illegal employment, working on customers’ fingernails when officers swooped on the unlawful operation.

In court papers seen by the Telegraph, it is stated that the workers either had expired UK visitor visas, yet-to-be-resolved appeals lodged with the Home Office regarding their presence here, or were subject to conditions preventing them from carrying out any work in the country.

Two of Hoang’s illegal employees – Cong Dang, 36, and Thi Nguyen, 49 – were both working in the nail bar at the time of both immigration busts on July 3 and October 7.

The third unlawful worker – Kim Hoang, 31 – was there when the second raid took place.

Kim Hoang, Dang and Nguyen all had application registration cards (ARCs) which stated that they were forbidden from taking employment in the UK.

Following the July raid, business owner Minh Hoang wrote a letter to the civil penalty unit claiming that he was unaware that his staff were not permitted to work.

He also asserted that he did not know that the onus was on him to have carried out appropriate checks prior to employing them.

But despite his declarations, Dang and Nguyen were again caught working for him just three months later.

According to the court papers, Dang claimed that he was merely undertaking a trial to test his competency to work as a nail technician at the time of the July incident.

He said that he was ‘very unlucky’ to be arrested on the premises in October as he was only there to collect a jacket that he had left – and had decided to work on a customer’s nails because the salon was ‘busy’.

Kim Hoang claimed that he was at the salon on October 7 to ‘collect baby clothes’ and that he, too, decided to help out with customers due to how busy the place was.

The Telegraph reported last year how police and immigration squads targeted the nail bar as part of a massive co-ordinated operation throughout the west of Scotland.

Police Scotland led the multi-agency blitz on businesses which had been under suspicion and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) officers were involved in the Greenock nail bar operation.

USA Nails and Beauty was targeted in a similar raid back in March 2012.

Minh Hoang and Nguyen, both of West Blackhall Street, Greenock, and Dang and Kim Hoang, now of Glasgow, initially denied the allegations against them through lawyers Aidan Gallagher and Gerry Keenan.

But all of the accused later admitted their involvement at a later hearing held at the sheriff court.

Sheriff Derek Hamilton fined Minh Hoang £12,000 – and told him that if he defaults on any of the instructed monthly payments of £1,000 he will go directly to jail.

Dang, Nguyen and Kim Hoang were admonished.