The owner of a Kenmore nail and beauty salon who illegally imported and sold cigarettes was sentenced to 18 months in prison today in Seattle’s U.S. District Court.

Han Bui, 45, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and will pay approximately $250,000 in tax penalties and assessments, announced U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan.

Bui, owner of Lovely Nails and Beauty Salon on Northeast 181st Street in Kenmore, pleaded guilty Feb. 12 to trafficking in counterfeit cigarettes. At sentencing John C. Coughenour, U.S. District judge, ordered that the tax assessments and penalties will go to the state for the taxes lost on the sale of the counterfeit cigarettes.

According to records filed in the case, Bui came to the attention of law enforcement as part of a coordinated investigation of illegal cigarette imports from Vietnam. The investigation identified Bui and her husband as the highest volume illegal importers of cigarettes from Vietnam.

The contraband cigarettes are sold under familiar U.S. brand names and packaging, but are manufactured in Vietnam. Bui did not pay federal excise taxes or state cigarette taxes on the cigarettes, according to the investigation.

Investigators estimate the tax loss from her illegal trafficking at more than $450,000.

When a search warrant was served on her home in July 2011, she possessed more than 400,000 contraband cigarettes, along with $115,500 cash, and a Lexus sport utility vehicle that she admitted was purchased with the proceeds of her cigarette trafficking. The cash and the vehicle are being forfeited to the government.

In asking for a two-year prison sentence, prosecutors wrote to the court that “between November of 2009 and July of 2011, Bui purchased from Vietnam and arranged the importation of hundreds of thousands of contraband cigarettes in hundreds of mailed parcels.”

On the day her house and business were searched, Bui was in possession of more than 2,000 cartons of cigarettes, prosecutors continued.

“Investigators have reason to believe that because the contraband cigarettes were being sold outside of legal, regulated channels, they were ending up in the hands of minors at disproportionately high rates,” they wrote.

The case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the Washington State Liquor Control Board. The case was prosecuted by sssistant United States Attorney Darwin Roberts.