The FBI arrests pimps on Brooklyn’s Penn Track, including two accused of murdering a rival

Three accused pimps are facing a host of charges for trafficking women at a notorious open-air sex market in Brooklyn — including two who murdered a rival to prevent one of their prostitutes from switching allegiances, the FBI alleges.

Omari “Sir Prince” Scott, 43, Michael “Victory” Simmons, 40, and Joel David “Sirbar” Forney, 41, were arrested last week on two separate charges.

Their arrests come as federal and state authorities continue to investigate sex trafficking operations along the “Penn Track” – a stretch of road on Pennsylvania Ave. in East New York that has long been known as a nuisance sex market in the neighborhood.

The FBI busted two more alleged pimps working in the area last year, while the Brooklyn district attorney’s office charged a third. A fourth pimp arrested in 2022 reached a plea deal in Brooklyn federal court in November.

Scott, of Brooklyn, and Simmons, of Pittsburgh, were charged Friday with federal murder on sex trafficking charges accused of plotting the May 1, 2023, shooting death of Cleveland Clay, a competing pimp.

Simmons pulled the trigger, the FBI alleges.

Forney, meanwhile, was arrested Wednesday on charges that he forced three women and a teenage girl into sex work, showing one of them a photo of a dismembered woman to scare her into following his twisted orders.

“This is what happens to women who leave their pimps,” Forney told the woman after showing her the gruesome photo on her phone, prosecutors said.

“We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to eradicate the degradation of women forced into sex work on the Penn Track and elsewhere in the District,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement about Forney’s arrest.

Scott, of Brooklyn, had at least three women do prostitution work for him between January 2021 and June 2023, two of whom he controlled with “force, fraud and coercion,” federal prosecutors wrote in a court filing Friday.

“I’m going to knock you out again because you disrespect me,” he told one of the women in a text message from June 2022, the FBI alleges. According to the FBI, he also posted a video on Instagram in which he is seen cursing her and pulling her hair to make her look at the camera.

In April of last year, he learned that another sex worker was planning to have him work for Clay, who, according to the FBI, also operated at the Penn Track.

A video from April 30 shows the sex worker getting out of Clay’s car with another woman and walking along the Penn Track. A minute later, Scott pulled up in his car, grabbed the sex worker by the hair, pulled her into the passenger seat and drove away, the FBI alleges.

Furious, he said during a recorded conversation: “I’m about to violate that bra….” I’m about to do something crazy for her…. I don’t respect this shit….I’m about to kill this bitch!”

Clay and Simmons had an argument the next morning, which led to Scott and Simmons deciding to wipe out the competition, the FBI say.

Simmons and Scott huddled outside a laundromat on Sheffield Ave. near Linden Blvd., then driving Simmons to a parking lot near Stanley and Pennsylvania Aves. went, where he shot Clay at least five times, according to the FBI.

The prostitute then went back to working for Scott, the FBI alleges.

Forney, of Kissimmee, Florida, committed his heinous acts, including the rape of a teenage girl, from 2014 to 2018, although he did not appear in online videos detailing his pimp lifestyle until 2022, the FBI alleges.

He lured a victim from Wisconsin to New York in 2016 with the promise of legitimate work, then raped her, threatened her and forced her into prostitution, beating her if she didn’t make him enough money, the FBI alleges.

On one occasion, he used a hotel shower to drown out her screams as he attacked her, according to a Wednesday filing by prosecutors.

He also routinely beat two other sex workers when they didn’t follow his strict rules and broke a woman’s front tooth with a punch to the face, the FBI allege.

In a 2012 YouTube video, Forney can be seen complaining about “hos who just like to sleep around, just want a bag of weed and some liquor.”