The drivers were circling Koreatown, driving a truck full of party girls. The so-called “Domi” — dressed in bikinis, miniskirts and tight dresses — were looking to get work at one of the many karaoke bars that filled the neighborhood.
Domi's drivers, named after the flight attendants who transport them, can earn $40 an hour for each passenger hired to party with karaoke clients. Every month, drivers pay a portion of their earnings to Daikun Cho, a well-known figure in Koreatown.
Authorities arrested Zhu last year, and he has since been charged with 55 counts of extortion, one count of attempted extortion and one count of car theft.
In a federal trial in downtown Los Angeles this month, prosecutors portrayed Cho, 39, as a gangster who for years extorted monthly protection fees from karaoke bar owners and domi drivers, many of whom were in the country illegally and did not speak fluent English. .
They told the court that he committed acts of violence against those who did not pay or violated his rules, including hitting one of the drivers with a baseball bat and shooting Al-Doumi in the neck. Prosecutors showed photos from Cho's Instagram account and photos of his tattoos to identify him as a member of the Grape Street Crips, a predominantly black gang based in the Watts housing project in Jordan Downs.
By the end of the five-day trial, jurors would emerge with a better understanding of Koreatown's underbelly, and they would be left to decide Cho's role in it.
“He wanted everyone in Koreatown to know about his power and that he had to get paid or else,” the aide said. US Attorney General. Gina McCabe told the jury at the start of the trial.
But defense attorneys claimed that drivers and karaoke bar owners paid Cho to be part of an “association,” akin to a dues-paying union member, and that in return he barred clubs and new drivers from interfering in their businesses. They said there was no conclusive evidence that Cho was behind the baseball bat swing or the shooting.
“He tried to bring some order to this chaotic gray market economy,” Karen Sosa, who represented Cho, said in her opening statement. “Everyone in this case was paying to play.”
Jo Hoon Lee testified during the trial that he first met Cho — known in the neighborhood as “DK” — when Lee planned to start a company called Plus to drive Domi cars around Koreatown.
“I was told if you want to start this kind of work, you will have to get permission from someone named DK,” he told me through a Korean translator. He testified that Cho told him he was a “Korean gang member.”
When Lee started Plus with a business partner, Yun Soo Shin, around 2019, they began paying Cho $100 a month, in cash or sometimes via Venmo, Lee testified. He said that if he and his partner had not paid, “we would not have been able to work.”
Drivers will pay an initial fee of about $1,500 and then a monthly joining fee, according to court testimony.
Lee testified that on any given night, he and Shane would drive 10 to 15 women — recruited through Craigslist — to different karaoke bars in the neighborhood. Sometimes they would drive from 8:30 pm to 6 am. The drivers were waiting to see if the Doumi had been hired. If not, drivers will not get paid.
“These girls go into clubs, get paraded in front of a middle-aged businessman…and these middle-aged businessmen will decide whether to hire any particular girl based on her looks, right?” asked Mark Werkman, Cho's attorney.
He answered me: “Yes.”
Werkman pointed out the rules Lee and Sheen set for the women they hired. Among them: no sex with clients and no drugs. Each woman was expected to work at least four nights a week.
One rule, presented in court, stipulated that customers and drivers could not lie about money, stating that they were only paid $120 plus tips for the first two hours and $60 plus tips for each additional hour.
Eyewitnesses testified that Cho also set the rules. If drivers are asked not to go to a particular karaoke bar and they go, they will be penalized. The same goes for karaoke bar owners who contacted drivers who Cho told them were banned.
The first penalty was $200. Next, $400, according to texts sent by Cho that were submitted to the court.
One text message to the driver read: “If you break our rule again, you will see the real devil.”
Shen testified that he and Lee stopped paying in early 2021, after Zhou raised prices. Within months, Shen testified, Cho and another man confronted him outside McQueen Karaoke on Western Avenue, pulled him from his car and beat him with aluminum baseball bats, breaking his arm.
The other attacker then stole the Honda Odyssey that Shane had rented to drive two Domi that night.
Shen said Cho was wearing a skeleton mask during the attack, but he was able to identify him by the upper half of his face and his voice. Prosecutors showed a photo that Cho posted on Instagram after the attack wearing what appeared to be the same mask.
The partners closed their business soon after, and Lee left the state.
Another witness, who said he worked at Concert Karaoke, testified that he had to pay Cho $600 every month because he “threatened us that if we didn't pay, we would lose our business and he would do something to us.” After he stopped pushing, he told the jury Cho threatened him that he had better not see him in the neighborhood.
The witness said he stopped going to Koreatown.
Prosecutors showed surveillance footage depicting a shooting outside a karaoke bar on July 15, 2022, which they said was carried out by Cho. Police camera footage showed Al-Doumi's body, which was shot in the neck, saying: “Help, help. Please help.”
Sang Hyun Shin, another Domi driver, testified that he paid Cho every month for four years before he decided to stop. He added that one night in January 2023, Cho punched him in the face and threatened to kill him. Sang Hyun Shin began working with the investigators and agreed to wear a wire the next time he pushed.
Zhou changed the meeting place three times, and at one point asked: “Did you call the police?” Before finally asking the driver to give the money to the middleman, according to text messages shown in court.
During the trial, Werkman and Sosa sought to cast doubt on the credibility of the witnesses, portraying them as having a motive to lie. They highlighted their immigration status and pointed to the possibility of obtaining U visas, which give immigrant victims of certain crimes the opportunity to live and work legally in the United States if they cooperate with authorities.
In his closing argument, Werkman called the witnesses' testimony “confused,” “evasive” and “incomplete.” Werkman referred to the drivers and Cho as “brothers.”
“These drivers have formed an association to bring a minimum of order to the forest,” Werkman said.
Werkman added that the payments received by Cho were a “petty sum.”
“Was this a protection racket or was it a voluntary, if sometimes unpleasant and unwelcome, association of street rats who needed to band together to achieve their common goal of exploiting hot, hard-working young women who had earned a few hundred dollars in money? “Money every night they humiliate themselves for the pleasure of karaoke bar patrons,” Werkman said.
Assistant US Attorney. Kevin Butler said the 56 charges linked to the extortion payments are “just a small fraction of the true amount of extortion that [Cho] “He was responsible for.”
“Cho was a predator. He preyed, stalked, stalked — as he called it — his victims: people in Koreatown who he believed either couldn’t or didn’t want to go to the police,” Butler said during his closing argument. “He gave each of them an impossible and false choice.” “Pay him or get banned. Pay him or face the consequences. Pay him or flee the country. Pay him or get out of your car and get beaten with aluminum baseball bats. Pay him or get shot in the neck.”
On Tuesday morning, the jury returned with its verdict: guilty on all counts.
