Rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs was hit with sex trafficking and racketeering charges on Tuesday as federal prosecutors filed a criminal indictment against the music mogul accusing him of forcing women to participate in wild and violent sexual performances he videotaped.
In the 14-page indictment, Combs, 54, is accused of transporting male sex workers and women across state lines to participate in the hedonistic parties he and his colleagues dubbed “Freak Offs.” Manhattan Federal Court Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky ordered Combs held without bail during the star’s arraignment Tuesday afternoon.
The Freak Offs involved wild sexual antics, copious amounts of drugs including Xanax and GHB, and bottles upon bottles of lubricant and baby oil, federal authorities said. They were held in hotel rooms in Manhattan, Los Angeles, and foreign countries between 2008 and earlier this year, prosecutors said.
Combs would fly in male sex workers and encourage his girlfriends to participate in the elaborate sex acts that he set up, directed and videotaped, the indictment reads.
If they didn’t want to join in, he would verbally and physically abuse and harass them until they would, then “used the embarrassing and sensitive recordings as collateral against the victims,” United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damien Williams told reporters Tuesday.
“This office is determined to investigate and prosecute anyone who engages in sex trafficking, no matter how powerful or wealthy or famous you may be,” Williams said. “A year ago, Sean Combs stood in Times Square and was handed a key to New York City. Today, he’s been indicted and face justice in the Southern District of New York.”
Mayor Eric Adams presented Combs with the honorary Key to the City in 2023. In June, Adams asked that Combs return the honor after a 2016 hotel video surfaced showing the Bad Boy Records founder brutally beating R&B singer Cassie Ventura in a hotel hallway.
Combs was wrapped in a towel during the beating. Federal prosecutors now say that Ventura was escaping a Freak Off when Combs followed and beat her in the hallway. Afterwards, his employees paid off hotel workers to keep quiet, prosecutors said.
Ventura on Tuesday declined to comment on the federal charges against Combs.
Some Freak Offs would last days, prosecutors said. Afterward, those involved would “receive IV fluids to recover from the physical exertion and drug use,” the complaint read. Sometimes participants were physically injured.
Combs often pleasured himself as he watched the intense Caligula-style sex romps, officials said.
He allegedly forced the women to participate by plying them with drugs as well as using “physical violence, promises of career opportunities” and “granting and threatening to withhold financial support,” the indictment reads.
“(He) abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires,” the indictment read. “To do so, Combs relied on the 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.”
In the arson case, Combs is accused of having an underling open the convertible top of a rival’s car and throwing a Molotov cocktail inside. Combs later bragged about his role in the incident, prosecutors say.
Two weeks earlier, he and a co-conspirator were accused of forcing a victim at gunpoint to break into a man’s home, prosecutors allege.
Combs is already facing multiple accusations in civil lawsuits of sexual abuse and trafficking.
The “Shake Ya Tailfeather” rapper was arrested late Monday in Manhattan, about six months after federal authorities raided his luxurious homes in Los Angeles and Miami. TMZ reported Diddy was in a Midtown hotel when federal officers arrested him.
Combs, through his attorney, had informed the feds where he was staying and had offered to surrender to authorities at a specific date and time, but investigators arrested him anyway.
On Tuesday morning Combs’ lawyer Marc Agnifilo said Combs “knew this was coming.”
“We brought him to New York about two weeks ago because we knew this day was going to come, and it’s here,” Agnifilo said.
“He came here to surrender at a time agreeable to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and then they arrested him last night,” said Agnifilo, who stayed with Combs while he was in custody until about 1 a.m. “His spirits are good. He’s confident. He is dealing with this head-on the way he’s dealt with every challenge in his life. And he’s not guilty. He’s innocent of these charges. He’s going to fight this with all of his energy and all of his might.”
Employees at several of Combs companies, including Bad Boy Entertainment and Combs Enterprises, organized and set up the Freak Offs by booking the hotel rooms and stocking them with “controlled substances, baby oil, lubricant, (and) extra linens,” the indictment reads. His staffers were also responsible for bringing in extra lighting.
When the Freak Offs concluded, the staffers had to clean the hotel rooms and “mitigate room damage,” federal officials charge.
If the Freak Offs got out of control, hotel staffers were given stacks of cash to keep quiet, Williams said.
During the raids of Combs’ homes in Miami and Los Angeles in March, federal investigators found “cases and cases” of lubricant — more than 1,000 bottles — as well as three defaced AR-15 assault weapons with a large capacity drum magazine capable of holding 59 rounds.
Two of the defaced firearms were found dismantled in the bedroom closet of Combs’ Miami estate, federal prosecutors noted.
“Part of the reason why his conduct was so pervasive and harmful was because his victims and others didn’t feel comfortable denying his wishes because of the presence of firearms,” Williams said.
In papers filed with the court arguing Combs should be held without bail, prosecutors said Combs was not only a flight risk but could use his freedom to intimidate witnesses and his victims.
“(Combs) has attempted to bribe security staff and threatened and interfered with witnesses to his criminal conduct,” a detention memo filed by the Southern District noted.
“He has already tried to obstruct the Government’s investigation of this case, repeatedly contacting victims and witnesses and feeding them false narratives of events. There are simply no conditions that would ensure that the defendant’s efforts to obstruct and tamper with witnesses will stop.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson argued Tuesday that Combs’ attempts to cover up his crimes were so pervasive and severe that he’d be a constant threat of witness tampering if allowed to remain free.
“Simply put, he is a serial abuser and a serial obstructor,” she said, referring at length to the 2016 video involving Ventura and his subsequent attempts to bribe hotel employees to keep the episode quiet.
“The defendant himself has contacted witnesses, including those who had received grand jury subpoenas,” she said.
She compared his attempts at obstruction to that of disgraced singer R. Kelly, sexual predator and financier Jeffrey Epstein and NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere, all of whom were locked up pending trial. Epstein famously hanged himself in the now-closed Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.
In a letter to Judge Tarnofsky, Agnifilo said Combs had been cooperating with the investigation ever since federal officers raided his client’s homes and asked that he be ordered held on $50 million bond.
Combs, Agnifilo added, has already surrendered his passport and was in the process of selling his plane, limiting his chances of fleeing the jurisdiction.
“Mr. Combs is eminently trustworthy,” Agnifilo wrote. “He is demonstrably committed to showing his innocence in court.”
A blockbuster lawsuit by Ventura accused him of physically abusing her for years and raping her when she tried to leave him. The suit was settled in late 2023.
A recent lawsuit filed in New York accused the rap mogul of drugging and sexually assaulting a 22-year-old IMG model, who says in the suit she kept the clothes she wore that night as evidence.
Former model Crystal McKinney filed a Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit in May alleging Combs attacked her in 2003 after a designer introduced them at a Men’s Fashion Week event at Cipriani Downtown.
At the dinner, Combs was overly suggestive, “bordering on leering,” as he plied McKinney with alcohol and promised to use his industry connections to advance the Georgia native’s career, predicting she “was going to make it big one day,” the suit alleges.
“Hopeful that Combs would fulfill his promises to help her career,” McKinney accepted an invitation back to Combs’ West 44th Street Midtown studio, where she alleges the rapper and his associates offered her marijuana she later determined was laced with an intoxicant, the suit says.
In graphic detail, the suit alleges Combs then led a clearly intoxicated McKinney to the bathroom, forcibly kissing her and shoving her head down to perform oral sex against her will before leading her back into the studio, where she lost consciousness.
At Combs’ arraignment Tuesday, Agnifilo offered a preview of the defense’s argument at trial, painting Ventura as an opportunist who tried to shake Combs down for $30 million to prevent her from writing a tell-all book about their relationship. The defense lawyer was asking that Combs be released on $50 million bond, secured by a $48 million house in Florida.
He called the decadelong relationship of Combs and Ventura “mutually toxic,” and said the video showed his reaction after she hit him in the head with a phone and ran out of their hotel room with his clothes in a bag when she learned he’d been sleeping around with other women.
Agnifilo also argued that Combs’ sexual interests didn’t make him a criminal, and all of the adults involved in their sexual escapades were consenting.
“As part of the way these two adults wanted to be intimate together, a third person, a male, would come into their situation and have sexual contact with the woman,” he said. “Is it sex trafficking? No. Not if everybody wants to be there.”
He also contended that Combs wasn’t obstructing justice because he didn’t know of any criminal investigation until March.
As for the guns, Agnifilo blamed Combs’ private security company. “These aren’t his guns. He has nothing to do with how guns are kept in his house,” he said.
Tarnofsky ultimately ruled that she couldn’t risk releasing him. “My concern is that this is a crime that happens behind closed doors,” she said. “The alleged victims are people with whom there is a power imbalance.”
The judge also said she worried about Combs’ propensity for violence when he’s on drugs.
“You have asked me to trust you and to trust him,” she said, referring to Combs and his lawyer. “And I don’t know you can trust yourself.”
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