NEW YORK (AP) - A federal judge ordered a payday on Tuesday for three dozen immigrant delivery workers who toiled for years at New York City restaurants without proper wages.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Dolinger ordered the owner of several popular Vietnamese cafes to pay more than $4.6 million in back wages and overtime dating to 1999, plus fines and penalties, to a group of former employees who said they had received substandard wages.

The payment also compensates each worker thousands of dollars for supplying their own bicycles and scooters for the job.

The court said the 36 workers, all Chinese immigrants with limited English skills, had largely been living off the tips they earned by delivering orders of hot food around the city for Saigon Grill restaurants.

“This should be a warning to anyone out there who thinks they can get away with violating the law and failing to pay immigrant workers their rightful wages,” said Kenneth Kimerling, an attorney with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which helped bring the case.

The restaurant didn't question the workers' immigration status but offered little in the way of pay. Their salaries ranged from $340 to $600 per month, no matter how many hours they worked.

A few of the delivery workers were able to bring in as much as $3,500 or $4,000 in tips per month by putting in long hours six or seven days a week.

But the court said the tip income didn't absolve the restaurant's owner of his responsibility to abide by wage laws.

A lawyer for the Saigon Grill didn't immediately return a phone call seeking comment Tuesday. Before the trial, Saigon Grill attorney Michael Weisberg had said the restaurant's primary owner was only trying to help fellow immigrants get a leg up.

He also said that Simon Nget was a Cambodian refugee who arrived in the U.S. as a teenager, started in the restaurant industry as a waiter and worked his way up to running his own restaurant.

Weisberg had said the workers made a “fortune” once their tips were factored in and were unfairly seeking a quick payday at the expense of a boss who had treated them well.

The workers' lawsuit was one of a growing number of legal complaints alleging exploitation of immigrants in low-pay industries in New York and elsewhere. Federal lawsuits alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act have surged nationwide in recent years.