DALLAS – Kyong “Jackie” Roberts came to America as the Korean bride of a U.S. serviceman more than 20 years ago and climbed from dress shop owner to modeling studio proprietor to queen of Asian brothels.

Her last entrepreneurial efforts made her a 52-year-old Dallas millionaire.

But her empire tumbled in a matter of hours in an early morning raid last summer. Virtually every asset she had amassed was either locked down or carted off by police and federal agents – including more than a dozen Korean women who had been smuggled into the United States as stock in her brothels.

The rise and fall of the Dallas madam through court records and interviews offer a rare glimpse into the lucrative underworld of international recruiters and brothel owners who reap millions off indentured prostitutes.

In the past year, large-scale raids and indictments have unraveled rings in Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Dozens of federal and state criminal indictments have followed, including charges of forced labor, aggravated promotion of prostitution, engaging in organized crime, money laundering and illegal bulk cash shipments back to Korea.

In Dallas, authorities say the alliance between feds and local police has put a major dent in prostitution operations. In the last year: The effort tripled the average number of charges filed in Dallas County against pimps or madams. And five felony indictments were filed in federal courts. At least 15 spas have been shuttered.

Millions in assets have been seized, including about $1.5 million in cash, cars and commercial real estate from one set of raids in August alone.

Kevin Kozak, acting special agent in charge for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigations in Los Angeles, said the effort is part of an “endgame” to completely shut down the Korean sex industry in the U.S.

“When you look at the enterprise, it’s a very dark underworld with some very violent predatory criminals,” he said.

Phillip Robertson, a Dallas lawyer who defends spa owners and workers on a variety of legal troubles, said the yearlong campaign has been impressive, “and the pressure has been turned up on those who they see as big players in these businesses instead of just the worker bees.”

“But these people are not pimps,” he said. “They don’t deal in weapons or violence, drugs or alcohol. And I haven’t come across anyone who said they were forced to whore, either.”

Koreans made up at least three out of four people charged with aggravated promotion of prostitution in Dallas County last year. With few exceptions, court records show that operators charged in the series of raids used a smuggling pipeline to supply fresh stock in the prostitution trade.

Federal indictments have focused on issues of human trafficking, forced labor and illegal bulk cash shipments back to Korea. Four Korean brothel owners – including Roberts – have pleaded guilty to charges linked to their operations, such as cash smuggling or trying to avoid reporting large deposits at banks. Two others await trial on charges of forced labor and harboring illegal immigrants for prostitution.

“This was clearly the largest prostitution operation I’ve ever been a part of,” said Deputy Chief Julian Bernal, a Dallas police division commander who oversees vice operations. “We’ve shut down a number of them, and there’s going to be more.”

Estimates vary, but there may be another 45 spas in operation in Dallas alone.

In late 2004, ICE agents and Dallas vice officers found an informant with accurate, inside knowledge of how women were recruited in Korea to work in Dallas brothels.

For fees averaging $15,000 apiece, smugglers flew the women to Canada and Mexico, then walked them over the border into the U.S.

Brothel owners operating as massage parlors, spas, baths, saunas, modeling studios or nightclubs assumed the women’s smuggling debts, often taking their passports as a guarantee that they would be paid back.

In March 2005, the ICE informant reported that Sung Bum Chang and his wife, Hyang, ran such an operation out of Club Wa on Walnut Hill Lane.

According to court records, women were provided as “party guests for businessmen and other individuals,” with private party rooms at $100 a girl. Sex was not guaranteed. ICE agent Darrell Stanley explained in an affidavit that a 67-year-old madam negotiated further favors with customers.

“Chang obtains his illegal Korean females by contacting a man known as `David’ . . . who acts as a broker for the transportation and illegal entry,” Stanley wrote.

By April, a search of the Changs’ home in Coppell netted a half-dozen illegal immigrants living in the second-story bedrooms, $10,000 in cash and two cars. Many of the women confirmed what the informant said.

Chang and his wife were charged in federal court with forced labor and other charges related to human trafficking. They pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial. Their lawyers have declined requests for interviews.

That same month, Dallas police arrested another Coppell couple on charges of running a brothel in northwest Dallas. Court records don’t disclose whether illegal workers were found, only that three women had been busted in undercover operations at Golden Flower on Harry Hines Boulevard.

ICE and Dallas vice officers also had their eye on the 38-year-old owner of three other brothels. A different informant worked in one of Mi Na Malcolm’s spas. Agents recorded Malcolm’s phone calls and monitored bank deposits. The informant even collected her trash to pass on to agents.

By early June, ICE agents received information connecting a West Coast broker of Korean women to North Texas brothels. The informant told agents that Wu Sang Nah fled federal raids in San Francisco, moved into a Coppell apartment and drove a new BMW registered to Malcolm.

Nah, one of the key recruiters under indictment in California, also supplied Malcolm with working girls.

“When Malcolm is in need of additional or new females to work . . . she contacts . . . Nah and others yet to be identified in South Korea and Canada,” Stanley wrote in a statement justifying the August search warrants.

Relationships among spa operators in northwest Dallas were beginning to fray last summer as the investigation intensified.

Early one June evening, police arrived at the string of spas owned by Roberts on Emerald Street after a former tenant threw a glass ashtray at the new operator. According to police, the woman also slapped 52-year-old Sang Hyun Cho, who was part owner of the spas with Roberts.

Both declined to press charges, and police issued the woman a citation. Reports don’t mention her name.

In July, agents learned that Malcolm planned to ship about $400,000 to Korea in case pressure from ongoing investigations “got hot” in Dallas.

Federal agents had already intercepted a box of cookies mailed by Malcolm in April that was padded with $60,000 in $100 bills, profit from her three spas.

That same month, police answered another call to the spas’ locale after 24-year-old Hyo Nam reportedly whacked Cho with a broom handle over her recent eviction.

The woman was so irate that one of the officers fired his Taser at her when she rushed him with the broom handle, according to a police report. The Taser failed to stun her, and the officer knocked her to the ground and handcuffed her.

Inside the spa, police tallied about $2,500 worth of smashed mirrors, doors and windows, but Cho was again unwilling to press charges. Police arrested Nam on charges of criminal mischief, but she has not been indicted in the incident.

The next visit by Dallas police would be en masse with federal agents and would shut down the six Emerald Street spas for good.

On Aug. 12, the Dallas police briefing room overflowed with more than 200 people called in to help with raids on the network of spas owned or run by Malcolm and Roberts.

In a single day, Dallas police, ICE and the FBI seized almost $500,000 in cash, more than 138,000 condoms, a half-dozen luxury cars and SUVs – and every computer, day planner and cellphone in sight from eight spas in northwest Dallas.

More than 40 women were taken into custody by immigration officials to decide who was a trafficking victim and who wasn’t.

As police cataloged and rounded up workers, a vice cop asked Roberts whether she knew that her workers were selling sex at her spas.

“I don’t have to answer that,” Roberts was quoted as saying. “You know what goes on in those places. I have to make money, like everyone else.”

Three owners – Malcolm, Roberts and Cho – were shut down. Another seven operators were charged in a rain of indictments throughout late summer and fall.

The push to close brothels didn’t stop with the August raids. Police carried out raids on four spas on North Stemmons and Market Center Boulevard this year.

Again, police learned from informants and witnesses that three of the spas were making about $28,000 a month combined and used illegal immigrants. The owners of those spas have not been identified in court records, nor have they been charged criminally.

Police did arrest the owner of the fourth spa at that location, but the case has yet to go before a grand jury. No money or assets were seized, and search warrants show no sign that any women were forced to work off smuggling debts.

Two weeks ago, federal agents raided the Paradise Spa on North Industrial Boulevard when indictments of its owner and three others were unsealed in California and accused the four of running nine brothels in both states.

Agents arrested owner Jung Ock Mao at her motocross track in Madisonville, Texas, and prosecutors promised to go after $4 million in assets that they said were a result of her chain of brothels.

But Robertson, the defense attorney, said the businesses will be back because they’re driven by supply and demand. He called last year’s drive a shell game played by both sides.

“It may look like law enforcement is eradicating these evil spa owners,” he said. “But someone else will step right in and start up the businesses again.”

As long as “Johns” continue their demand for services from the world’s oldest profession, Robertson said, Dallas police will have to continue their press on brothels to make any difference. It’s a cat-and-mouse game that will be hard to sustain, he said.

“A year from now, no one will pay attention to it,” he said. “The next prosecution fad will come along with another easy target, and this one will go on the back burner.”