Bloomingdale’s, L’Oreal Sued by Korean Worker Over Arrest (1)

A sales associate at the L’Oreal counter in Bloomingdale’s flagship Manhattan store was falsely accused of participating in a customer’s fraud, arrested, and then fired, a federal lawsuit charges.

Bloomingdale’s Inc. had Hye Sun Kang arrested because it wrongly believed she was Chinese-American and participated in a Chinese customer’s fraudulent credit card purchases, the lawsuit alleges. Kang is Korean-American, she says in the complaint she filed Dec. 13 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Because of that anti-Asian stereotyping, Kang was interrogated by the Bloomingdale’s asset protection team for roughly three hours, then arrested ...