SUSPECTS: More than 40 Southern California and San Francisco Bay Area residents.

ALLEGED CRIMES: Harboring aliens; conspiracy to launder money; conspiracy to transport female Korean nationals across state lines with intent to engage in prostitution; using force, fraud or coercion to cause women to engage in commercial sex acts.

BACKGROUND: Authorities arrested the suspects and have so far seized more than $1.8 million as part of Operation Gilded Cage, an investigation into the trafficking of Korean women into brothels in California and other states. The nine-month investigation, which has involved several government agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), began last fall and culminated with the coordinated raid of dozens of establishments in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles, resulting in the arrests.

All the suspects are connected in some way to acupuncture clinics, chiropractic offices, massage parlors, spas, travel agencies and taxi services that federal authorities say were fronts for brothels. Twenty-four were indicted for their alleged roles in the “sophisticated human smuggling scheme,” according to an ICE statement released July 14. Among the suspects:

• Sung Yong Kim (a.k.a. Mr. Kim, a.k.a. Nam), 39, and Wu Sung Nah (a.k.a. Kang) charged a trafficking fee for two South Korean women to be transported from Virginia to Los Angeles, and then to Kings Massage, on 315 Jessie St., in San Francisco. Kim and Nah allegedly “used force, fraud or coercion” to make the women “engage in a commercial sex act,” according to the FBI.

• Young Joon Yang owned and operated Yang’s Taxi, an underground taxi service, to take the women to and from airports and brothels in the San Francisco Bay Area. Among the brothels: Lee’s Oriental Massage, Suk Hee Oriental Massage and Sauna, Lucky Spa, Palm Tree Massage, Empire Health Club and Geneva Oriental Spa. Yang’s Taxi also took prostitutes back and forth between brothels and private homes. Yang also allegedly owned and operated YJY Travel and Tour to buy tickets for the Korean-speaking prostitutes to and from airports in San Francisco, Oakland, Las Vegas, Dallas, New York and Boston.

• Yang and three others — Hang Joe Yoon, Myong Su Ahn (a.k.a. Paula Lee), 50, and Nam Young Lee, 38 — were charged with conspiracy to engage in money laundering in order to conceal the proceeds of alien harboring and interstate transportation for prostitution from the United States to South Korea.

• Hye Sun Sin (a.k.a. Pink), 26, allegedly operated from her Los Angeles apartment on Rossmore Avenue two Internet sites, including Asianbedgirl.com, which offered call girl services using undocumented Korean women as prostitutes.

• Yang and Ho Kyung Kim were the alleged ringleaders of the underground network known as the Jung Organization.

VICTIMS: About 100 South Korean women, most of whom were told to work as prostitutes until their trafficking debts — about $16,000 each — were paid in full. Some were smuggled into the country across Mexican and Canadian borders to work in Northern California, Colorado and Texas. Others obtained visitors’ visas.