Kathleen Cullinan, The Examiner
2006-08-18 09:00:00.0
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BALTIMORE -

A detailed log was kept of customers who frequented an alleged brothel in Woodlawn and $21,000 in cash was found in a raid this week on the parlor, which presented itself as a tanning salon, federal officials said.

Customers would “pretty much know” what was really for sale beyond the waiting room at Moon Light Tanning and Spa when they went inside, said Mark Bastan, an official at the Baltimore office of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Woodlawn storefront was part of a network of similar establishments as far north as Rhode Island and south to Washington, D.C., officials said, that employed Korean women smuggled into the United States and prostituting themselves to repay their transportation debts.

“These are not uncommon. We’ve had a number of investigations with Hispanic organizations and Vietnamese organizations,” said Bastan, whose office launched its own investigation into Moon Light more than six months ago. New York authorities took it over this spring, discovering the enterprise ran up the East Coast, Bastan said.

Three women — Sun Im An, 44, Kum Ok Lowery, 53, and Mi Ja Park, 41 — were arrested and five more were found hiding in secret compartments inside the salon when officials broke down the door Tuesday in the raid, Bastan said. A fourth woman is still wanted, he said.

Local authorities stopped men coming to patronize Moon Light after the raid, checking them for outstanding warrants and sending them on their way, said Baltimore County police spokesman Bill Toohey. Two of the women found hiding in the salon were arrested on state prostitution charges, he said: Nan Taylor, 48, of Colorado Springs, Colo., and Soo Mi Lee, 28, of McLean, Va. Toohey said the state doesn’t generally pursue charges against men for soliciting prostitution.

Two more of the five found hiding in the salon were taken to a facility in Virginia and a third, a naturalized citizen, was released, Bastan said.

Sitting in the middle of a strip mall opposite Woodlawn High School, the salon operated alongside international food markets, a mosque, a small church and a world travel agency. The neon “Open” sign in the window was dark Thursday, but stickers on the glass door advertised three separate security systems in place at the store. Shopkeepers and customers said they were surprised at the news about the salon.

“Young, old, black, white,” said a hairdresser at Blessed Hands Unisex Salon and Apparel who declined to give her name, describing the men she watched walk into the shop next door. “I used to stand out there and laugh.”

kcullinan@baltimoreexaminer.com