A Brooklyn man will spend the next half-century behind bars after being sentenced for orchestrating the killing of a rival pimp and for trafficking two women. Omari Scott, 45, received a 50-year prison term in a case that tied a deadly shooting to a broader sex-trafficking operation in New York City.
Prosecutors described Scott as a trafficker who controlled the women in his orbit through fear and coercion. According to the case laid out against him, he used violence, threats and financial control to traffic women, keeping them under his grip rather than allowing them to leave.
Much of that activity, prosecutors said, was centered on the Penn Track in East New York, along with other locations. The area functioned as a hub for Scott's operation, the backdrop against which the trafficking and the violence that followed played out.
The most serious part of the case was the murder of a rival pimp. Prosecutors said Scott did not carry out the killing himself but instead recruited another man, Michael Simmons, to kill his rival, Cleveland Clay, turning a dispute between the two men into a fatal attack.
The shooting took place in May 2023, an incident captured on video from the scene. That footage and the wider investigation ultimately connected Scott to the killing and formed part of the evidence that led to his conviction and the lengthy sentence handed down against him.
Simmons, the man prosecutors say Scott brought in to carry out the murder, has since pleaded guilty in the case. He is awaiting sentencing, meaning a second reckoning in the killing of Cleveland Clay is still to come even as Scott's punishment is now set.
With the 50-year term, the case against Scott is effectively closed, folding together the counts of orchestrating a murder and trafficking two women into a single, decades-long sentence. The outcome marks the end of a prosecution that linked the exploitation of women to a killing carried out to protect that control.