Sean “Diddy” Combs is facing charges of sex trafficking and racketeering, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Tuesday that alleged he also engaged in kidnapping, forced labor, bribery and other crimes.
Combs, 54, appeared in court in New York on Tuesday, after he was arrested in connection with the charges late on Monday in Manhattan, roughly six months after federal authorities conducting a sex-trafficking investigation raided his luxurious homes in Los Angeles and Miami.
The three-count, 14-page indictment alleges racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion, and transportation to engage in prostitution.
The document contains remarkably graphic details, including that Combs would force sex trafficking victims to engage in group sex acts with associates of his that he referred to as “freak offs” – sometimes for days at a time – while he recorded video of the encounters and masturbated to them. The encounters could last for days and were so physically exerting on him and his victims – whom he would force to ingest drugs – that all “typically received IV fluids to recover” in the aftermath, the indictment said.
“For decades, SEAN COMBS, a/k/a ‘Puff Daddy,’ a/k/a ‘P Diddy,’ a/k/a ‘Diddy,’ a/k/a ‘PD,’ a/k/a ‘Love,’ the defendant, abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct,” the indictment reads.
Combs’ alleged criminal conspiracy, the indictment says, “relied on employees, resources, and influence of the multi-faceted business empire that he led and controlled – creating a criminal enterprise whose members and associates engaged in, and attempted to engage in, among other crimes, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice”.
It is unclear whether the arson allegation may refer to Ventura’s lawsuit – in which she stated that Combs purportedly threatened to blow up rapper Kid Cudi’s car in 2012 after the latter man briefly dated her.
Cudi’s car allegedly exploded in the driveway of his residence. A statement that he provided to the New York Times later said the allegations in Ventura’s lawsuit were “all true”.
The indictment made it a point to say that Combs would also task his employees with providing everything from lubricant to drugs for the alleged “freak offs”.
“Freak Offs occurred regularly, sometimes lasted multiple days, and often involved multiple commercial sex workers,” the complaint says. Combs would direct the sex acts at the center of the freaks offs while he also “distributed a variety of controlled substances to victims, in part to keep the victims obedient and compliant”.
The attention to detail attributed to Combs for the freak offs is staggering. Not only would his supervisors, security, hotel staff and assistants stock up on drugs and lubricant, they would also procure baby oil, extra linens, specialized lighting as well as book hotel rooms and travel arrangements.
When investigators raided Comb’s homes in Miami and Los Angeles in March, the items they seized included drugs, more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant and three AR-15 rifles with a drum-style magazine.
Contained in the complaint are apparent references to singer Casandra Ventura, Combs’s former girlfriend who came forward with allegations of sexual abuse last year that Combs quickly settled out of court. He was recorded beating her in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel in 2016, video of which surfaced only earlier this year.
The indictment suggests Combs “attempted to bribe [a hotel] staff member to ensure silence” after that assault, which the indictment describes without naming Ventura.
The government adds that – from at least 2009 – Combs “assaulted women by, among other things, striking, punching, dragging, throwing objects at, and kicking them”. The video from Ventura’s assault had been the most publicly apparent evidence of that at the time of the indictment unsealed on Tuesday, which had actually been handed up in secret four days earlier.
Combs appeared in Manhattan federal court to face the charges, where he entered a plea of not guilty and his lawyers tried to keep him out of jail.
His attorneys requested his release to home detention and travel restrictions as well as a $50m bond secured on the basis of his home in Miami. They said in a motion that Combs will turn over his passport and that he is attempting to sell his private jet. They said that “conditions at Metropolitan detention center in Brooklyn are not fit for pre-trial detention”.
Prosecutors said Combs repeatedly engaged in violence towards his employees and others, including that Combs’ allies set fire to a vehicle by slicing open its convertible top and dropping a Molotov cocktail inside and should be denied bail.
They argued that Combs is “a serious flight risk” and pointed out that his net worth is close to $1bn, including over $1m in personal cash on hand as of last December.
Combs “has the money, manpower and tools” to flee without detection, they wrote, and that Combs’ “disposition to violence cannot be reasonably prevented through bail conditions”.
Speaking for the prosecution at a news conference on Tuesday, Damien Williams, the US attorney, said: “Combs led and participated in a racketeering conspiracy that used the business empire he controlled to carry out criminal activity, including sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery and the obstruction of justice.”
Since last year, Combs has been sued by people who say he subjected them to physical or sexual abuse. He has denied many of those allegations, and his lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said outside a federal courthouse in New York City on Tuesday he personally would “fight like hell” to try to get his client released from custody.
Of Combs, Agnifilo said, “His spirits are good. He’s confident.”
Combs has become an industry pariah.
That flood began in November, when Ventura – the R&B vocalist known as Cassie – filed a lawsuit saying he had beaten and raped her for years. She accused Combs of coercing her, and others, into unwanted sex in drug-fueled settings.
Combs settled the suit in a single day.
Nonetheless, the settlement did not prevent CNN from airing hotel security footage in May that showed Combs punching and kicking Cassie and throwing her on a floor eight years earlier.
After the video aired, Combs apologized, saying, “I was disgusted when I did it.” His apology contradicted years of denials that he was abusive.
Combs and his attorneys, however, denied similar allegations made by others in a string of lawsuits.
Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer for Cassie, said in a statement on Tuesday that “neither Ms Ventura nor I have any comment”.
In a series of pending lawsuits, a woman has alleged Combs raped her two decades ago when she was 17; a music producer alleged Combs forced him to have sex with prostitutes; and another woman, April Lampros, alleged Combs subjected her to “terrifying sexual encounters” starting when she was a college student in 1994.
More recently, the singer Dawn Richard – who formed part of the Combs-founded girl group Danity Kane – filed a lawsuit alleging sexual assault and inhumane treatment. And Combs’s legal team has also moved to overturn a $100m judgment awarded by default to an incarcerated man in Michigan after the plaintiff’s allegations were not contested in court by the music mogul.
