Glen McCurtayne

Ophelia, left, gets to work.

When pink vans emblazoned with "Topless Maids" and the phone number (818) 666-HUGE parked up on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, it caused a media storm. Actor Matthew Perry and talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres prank-called the business live on TV, while incensed local residents complained until the vans were impounded by the city. Now Sami Ammari, who runs the cleaning and massage firm, is suing the city after being hit with thousands of dollars in fines.

Yet this bizarre industry continues to boom. There are more naked maids in L.A. than you can shake a feather duster at, with myriad agencies springing up, including A Little Bit Dirty, Topless Maids and nudehousecleaners.com. Insiders claim there are as many as 300 freelance nude "servicers," mostly female and younger than 25.

Ophelia, 23, who declines to give her last name, is one of them. She's in an accelerated nursing program in San Diego and drives to L.A. for cleaning jobs like this. "It beats working in a bar," she says.

I ordered Ophelia online at Nudehousecleaners.com. The company's slogan is "We mop with no top!" and I was even allowed to choose my servicers from a selection of naughty photographs. One girl was licking her own nipple in her photo, and another was dressed only in a pink feather boa, but I chose two girls, "Ophelia" and "Roxy," because they looked like hard workers. I had burned some lasagna recently, so the oven was destroyed, and I hadn't ironed anything in days. Click, and click.

Intriguingly, I was given a code word ("banana"), so we could verify one another's identity upon their arrival. Would my cleaners show up naked, or in that embarrassing van?

They would not. In fact, they arrived sporting the official uniform of off-duty celebrities: Sweatpants and sneakers.

"A lot of guys just want us to pick things up from the floor," Roxy purrs. The 23-year-old tells me she's a ballet dancer and student from Long Beach. She's majoring in journalism and wants to be a news editor. "This is my first maid job," she admits.

Ophelia and Roxy are part of the latest batch of recruits to sign up for this weird industry. (Naturally, there's extremely high turnover.) While Ophelia has a male friend accompanying her, loitering outside, Roxy cheerily insists that the job is very safe. "It's made pretty clear that this is a no-sex, no-touching experience," she says.

Unfortunately, the girls won't touch my oven. "It looks like something died in there," Roxy chuckles. "I just do a light clean, OK."

Nudehousecleaners.com is run by entrepreneurs and best friends Christopher Allen, 38, and Jeffrey Loomis, 43, both of Las Vegas.

"We do nothing illegal," Allen says. "Escorting in America is illegal. We are just an agency for sexy cleaners."

Yet, he admits, many callers to the company's free phone number ask, "Can I have sex with my maid?"

"We tell them strictly no," he explains. "This is a niche business, but it's a serious business. Our website is highly unique; we have top security measures, and our clients are high-end. We just booked an order yesterday in Encino, and that guy works for the government."