Ming Lee

Smash-and-Grab ATM thieves struck the upscale Snob Life salon near downtown Atlanta early Friday morning. The hapless thieves were foiled when they discovered the ATM was bolted to the salon floor. The thieves hit the popular salon, owned by Atlanta socialite Ming Lee, around 6:40 a.m. Friday, police told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Snob Life is a salon that caters to Atlanta’s entertainment scene. The stylists are regulars on music videos sets. Their clients include reality TV stars and rappers.

“I feel violated,” salon manager Erin Wales told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We did not expect this at all.”

Ming Lee

Four males “in a red SUV broke the store’s glass door to gain entry,” Atlanta Police spokeswoman Officer Kim Jones told the AJC.com via email.

She added: “The suspects tried to take an ATM machine, but could not remove it from the foundation.”

The cash machine was bolted to the floor of the salon in the Castleberry Hills neighborhood of Atanta.

Police are reviewing surveillance video to identify the perpetrators. No arrests have been made.

Ming Lee (picture above and top) recently spoke with Urban Shake magazine, explaining how she got started in the salon business:

“I was raised by my grandmother and she couldn’t do hair. She would plait my hair up into four plaits and it was cool in elementary school, but when I got to middle school, I had to be cute. [laughs] I had to figure out how to do hair and once I did, people started to say that I was good at it, but I didn’t take it seriously. One day, I rolled past Aveda Institute on accident and decided to stop in. The director told me that Estée Lauder was doing a once-in-a-lifetime scholarship, but that it was due the next day. I went home, wrote the essays, found a model, submitted everything an I ended up winning – a competition that I accidentally stumbled upon. It was for a full ride and I didn’t have to pay for anything.”