An Irving mother and son promised to supply about two dozen women to an undercover Dallas officer as part of a prostitution business the pair were running, federal authorities say.

Helen Yu Kim, 58, and Daniel Mendoza Jr., 26, were arrested last week and each face one count of using a facility in interstate commerce to promote prostitution.

According to a criminal complaint filed in late October and unsealed this week, a Dallas police informant reported in August that Mendoza — then targeted in a drug sting — mentioned that his mother ran a "prostitution operation" in Dallas.

Police had the informant meet with Mendoza to see whether he could "procure at least eighteen girls to engage in commercial sex acts" with a group of businessmen who would purportedly be visiting town. At the Hooters in the West End on Sept. 7, Mendoza told the man he could provide the women, according to the complaint.

The informant met with Mendoza twice more in September, both times at the 54th Street restaurant on Market Place Boulevard in Irving, to discuss prices and whether the informant's supposed clients needed cocaine or erectile-dysfunction drugs. The complaint says Mendoza noted that the price would include "doing it more than once."

On Sept. 26, Mendoza told the informant during a phone call that his mother would supply 20 women at a total cost of $40,000 — "$2,000 per girl" — if the encounter took place at a hotel, the complaint says. Kim "offered to provide a karaoke room" instead, to reduce the price, the document says.

An undercover detective accompanied the informant to another meeting with Mendoza at 54th Street on Oct. 2. According to the complaint, Mendoza said his mother would want $20,000 of the payment up front and would want to inspect the hotel beforehand — noting that "the way this is set up, it could be considered human trafficking."

The informant negotiated the advance payment down to $5,000 over the next several days, then took that amount in cash to a meeting with Mendoza and Kim at an Irving Starbucks on Oct. 5. Kim took an envelope containing the money, the complaint says, and said that the informant could visit one of her spas to inspect the women.

In a recorded phone conversation five days later, Kim explained that she wanted the informant to meet the women beforehand so he'd know what they looked like.

"Danny said you've been working very hard, so thank you," the informant said, according to the complaint.

"Yeah, because it's a lot of girls, right?" Kim replied. "It's like he said, 'No mom, no fat girl or whatever.'"

The informant and the undercover detective met with Kim and three unidentified women at a private room Oct. 16 at Korea House Sushi Bar in Dallas, and Kim said the three would be at the hotel the night of Nov. 1, the complaint says.

During a final meeting at the 54th Street restaurant on Oct. 24, Kim told the detective she arranged for 25 women to go to the hotel "in case some of the girls get sick and back out," according to the complaint. Kim also confirmed that the women would provide "the girlfriend experience" — kissing and sex without condoms — during the event.

Kim, who told the detective she'd rather use the word "love" than "sex," said the event needed to be kept secret "because if it got out things would be bad for her," the complaint says.

Authorities issued arrest warrants for Kim and Mendoza on Oct. 30, and they were taken into custody Nov. 1. Detention hearings for both are scheduled Nov. 14.

Dallas County court records show that Kim served three years of deferred-adjudication probation after a 2007 plea agreement on a charge of promoting prostitution.