Man accused of using Uber to bring girls from CT group home faces decades in prison for sex crimes
A 28-year old man has been accused of hiring a ride share service to pick up teenage girls living at a state-run group home in West Hartford and deliver them to hotels and shopping malls in Connecticut and New York where he filmed himself sexually abusing them.
Nicolas “Breezy” Brown, who is believed to live in New York City, faces decades in prison after being indicted this week on two child pornography charges by a federal grand jury in New Haven.
The FBI learned in mid-March from the state Department of Children and Families, the group home operator, that someone calling himself Breezy was hiring Uber drivers to pick up girls and deliver them “to different hotels throughout the state,” according to an FBI affidavit. Two of the girls, aged 15 and 16, are minors and one recently turned 18.
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Subsequent investigation developed evidence that Brown had been arranging, since March 5, to have the girls delivered to hotels and shopping malls where he filmed himself abusing them, according to the affidavit filed in U.S. District Court.
At one point early in March, the 15- and 16-year old girls stayed with Brown at Travelodge in South Hackensack, N.J. for four days. He had promised them a short term home rental in Manhattan, but diverted to New Jersey when that didn’t work out, according to the affidavit
The first interaction with the minor girls apparently took place at the Hilton Hotel in Hartford, where they remained with Brown for seven hours before West Hartford police interceded. The police learned the girls were at the hotel after questioning the Uber driver, but Brown escaped after the 18-year-old girl spotted police in the hotel lobby and tipped him off, according to the affidavit.
Brown is accused of abusing and filming girls at shopping malls or hotels on four more occasions before he was apprehended on March 20 by the FBI and police, who were tipped off by Uber that he was at a Quality Inn in Danbury waiting for girls to be dropped off. Brown tried but failed to escape by jumping out a second floor window, according to the affidavit.
Three spokesmen for the Department of Children and Families were not immediately available to discuss the case. Brown has been denied bail and is in custody.
He is charged with production of child pornography, an offense that, if convicted, carries a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment of 15 years and a maximum term of imprisonment of 30 years, and with possessing and accessing with intent to view child pornography, an offense that carries a maximum term of imprisonment of 20 years.