A 63-year-old Brooklyn man was convicted at trial of running a violent, decade-long sex trafficking operation that forced two women, including his own wife, into prostitution under threat of guns he had nicknamed Click and Clack. Curtis Brown, who also went by the alias “Wise,” was found guilty of two counts of sex trafficking along with a string of related charges tied to abuse that prosecutors say spanned from March 2008 to April 2019.
District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced the trial conviction Wednesday, saying Brown “profited from a controlling, coercive, and violent operation for more than a decade,” according to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. The case was tried by Chief Assistant District Attorney Justin McNabney and Assistant District Attorney Meaghan Dunigan, who lead the office's Human Trafficking Response Unit, a specialized team of prosecutors, investigators and in-house clinical social workers dedicated to trafficking cases.
Prosecutors say Brown set a weekly quota of $3,500 for each woman and required them to dance at a strip club during the day before working in prostitution from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. He monitored the women's texts and calls, and required each of them to get a tattoo bearing his alias “Wise” alongside the year they began working for him. At least two women were also required to get breast implants, according to the office's account of the case.
Years of Violence Against His Wife
The abuse detailed at trial included repeated physical assaults against Brown's wife, who was also his trafficking victim and the mother of his child. Prosecutors say Brown stabbed his pregnant wife in the stomach with a knife in 2017, sexually assaulted her with a pole after forcing her to lie on a bed, and at another point broke her leg with a metal bar. Their child was born in April 2018.
On April 5, 2019, Brown assaulted his wife and broke her phone, the same day police arrested him. Roughly a year later, on April 4, 2020, prosecutors say Brown threatened his wife with death outside her home. He was convicted of one count of endangering the welfare of a child in connection with the case.
Perjury and Witness Intimidation After Arrest
Even after his arrest, Brown continued trying to obstruct the case, according to prosecutors. He was convicted of three counts of perjury in the first degree after committing perjury while testifying before the grand jury, as well as one count each of intimidating a victim or witness in the third degree and tampering with a witness in the third degree. He was additionally convicted of two counts of criminal contempt in the second degree and one count of promoting prostitution in the third degree.
Under New York Penal Law § 230.34, sex trafficking is a Class B felony punishable by up to 25 years in state prison per count, according to The Fast Law Firm. Perjury in the First Degree under § 210.15 is a Class D felony carrying up to seven years, while Intimidating a Victim or Witness in the Third Degree under § 215.15 is a Class E felony carrying up to four years, per Dupée & Monroe P.C. Brown is expected to be sentenced on September 10, and the stacked convictions leave him facing substantial prison exposure.
A Specialized Unit Built for Rare Cases
The prosecution drew on investigators Sean Ryan and Ariela DaSilva, along with investigative analysts Emma MacPhee, Leila Jiadi, Margaret Murphy and Jacqueline Karp. Melissa Martinez-Valdes, the office's former human trafficking clinical director, also supported the case, illustrating the layered, victim-centered approach the unit brings to trafficking prosecutions.
Full sex trafficking cases like Brown's remain uncommon in New York's court system. State data cited by the New York State Unified Court System shows sex trafficking arrests accounted for just six cases statewide in recent annual reporting, compared with hundreds of lower-level commercial sex arrests — a gap attributed to the high evidentiary burden of proving force, fraud or coercion over extended periods. New York City also runs specialized Human Trafficking Intervention Courts across all five boroughs designed to steer trafficking victims toward services rather than prosecution.
Nationally, federal trafficking prosecutions have also been climbing. The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 1,213 defendants were prosecuted for human trafficking in federal courts in fiscal year 2023, an 18% increase over 2013.
Part of a Pattern of Manhattan Prosecutions
Brown's conviction follows a string of recent trafficking cases brought by Bragg's office. In December 2025, the district attorney secured a 20-year state prison sentence against Jancys Santiago, who was convicted of coercing migrant women into commercial sex work through manufactured debt and violence. And in April, prosecutors indicted Matthew Richardson on charges that he forced an 18-year-old woman into prostitution through threats and a fabricated $10,000 debt.
New York also maintains a statewide Interagency Task Force on Human Trafficking, co-chaired by the Division of Criminal Justice Services and the Office of Disability and Temporary Assistance, which trains law enforcement to recognize subtle coercive tactics used by traffickers. Brown, who lives in Brooklyn, now awaits sentencing next month on a set of convictions that together carry the possibility of decades behind bars.
