Sean “Diddy” Combs was the one defendant indicted this week in a sweeping sex trafficking and racketeering investigation.
But federal prosecutors made clear that they don't imagine he was the one one accountable.
The 14-page indictment towards Combs accuses the founder of Bad Boy Entertainment of luring feminine victims and utilizing violence, coercion and medicines to get ladies to participate in “freak offs” — elaborate sex performances that usually had been recorded and generally lasted days.
The case alleges an intensive community, a sophisticated scheme that will have required a number of individuals to not simply know however be concerned to recruit victims, set up the freak offs, clear up and canopy the tracks so regulation enforcement wouldn't get entangled.
“Combs did not do this all on his own,” Damian Williams, the U.S. legal professional for the Southern District of New York, stated in saying the costs. “He used his business and employees of that business and other close associates to get his way.”
Williams wouldn't touch upon whether or not extra indictments had been coming however stated the investigation was “active and ongoing.”
“I can’t take anything off the table,” he stated. “Anything is possible.”
Combs has pleaded not responsible to all fees, together with the federal racketeering rely — a cost most frequently seen towards organized crime figures. John Gotti, James “Whitey” Bulger and associates of the Mexican Mafia and South L.A.’s Crips have confronted the cost up to now.
Authorities stated Combs’ energy and cash allowed him to evade publicity for years. But some authorized specialists stated the indictment may change that.
Matt Murphy, a former prosecutor who dealt with sex crimes for 4 years in Orange County, stated the wall of secrecy could also be coming down.
The racketeering cost means anybody concerned within the enterprise might face prison fees, Murphy stated, explaining, “there are people who have witnessed things who are going to have their own criminal interests to worry about now.”
That can put strain on associates to testify towards Combs, he stated.
“We don’t know yet, but I’m sure there’s insiders in his organization that face criminal liability, that are going to become federal witnesses,” Murphy stated.
According to courtroom information, prosecutors allege they've obtained data from “dozens of victims and witnesses” — in addition to communications with sex staff and journey information and recordings, together with “dozens of video recordings created by [Combs] of Freak Offs with victims.”
“This indictment only mentions Combs, even though it describes many other participants,” stated Laurie Levenson, a professor of prison regulation at Loyola Law School and a former federal prosecutor. “Then you ask the question, ‘Are all those participants getting a deal [from prosecutors], or will some of them be joining the defendant?’”
Federal prosecutors say Combs used his billion-dollar music and enterprise empire to perform the alleged crimes. According to the indictment, safety, family employees, private assistants and different associates took half — and helped disguise the prison exercise through the use of violence, intimidation, manipulation, bribery and threats.
For instance, the indictment states that earlier than the alleged freak offs, staff and associates had been tasked with luring feminine victims to participate, “often under the pretense of a romantic relationship.”
Others had been assigned to guide lodge rooms and inventory them with what prosecutors known as “Freak Off supplies” akin to medicine, child oil, lubricant, lighting and additional linens.
Employees and associates of Combs additionally had been instructed to prepare the victims’ journey, rent sex staff, provide Combs with massive sums of money to pay sex staff, and resupply the rooms when Combs requested.
In the times afterward, in accordance to the grievance, employees would provide Combs and others with IV fluids to recuperate. Others had been tasked with cleansing up the rooms “to mitigate room damage.”
Combs and others additionally used medicine, threats to reduce off monetary help, movies from the freak offs and their affect over the leisure business to hold victims collaborating and from going public, in accordance to the indictment.
“Victims believed they could not refuse [Combs’] demands without risking their financial or job security or without repercussions in the form of physical or emotional abuse,” the indictment reads.
Associates of Combs’ companies, the indictment states, helped to conceal proof and saved observe of the victims to ensure they didn’t go away motels or Combs’ houses.
The indictment additionally factors to a 2016 video, obtained by CNN in May, exhibiting Combs kicking and dragging his then-girlfriend Cassie, whose actual title is Casandra Ventura.
After a member of the lodge safety intervened, in accordance to the indictment, Combs allegedly tried to bribe them.
Prosecutors additionally alleged that Combs and his associates, after getting wind of a doable investigation, reached out to ladies and pressured them to give a false model of occasions, bribed them or threatened them.
In one case, prosecutors acknowledged that Combs known as a sufferer asking for her “friendship,” then tried to persuade her she had engaged willingly within the acts.
Mary Graw Lary — a professor at Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C., and the previous director of the National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse — likened Combs’ indictment to sexual crimes and allegations made towards celebrities such Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and R. Kelly.
In many of these instances, there have been quite a few individuals with information of some of the occasions, but it took years for allegations to floor.
“The number of people that are aware and facilitating this type of sexual exploitation of vulnerable women is many, many, many, and yet no one speaks up, and that is troubling,” Graw Lary stated.
Wealth is one of the instruments used to hold alleged unlawful actions beneath wraps, however Graw Lary stated affect, energy and the general public picture of the person additionally play a job.
She pointed to the 2002 fees of youngster pornography that had been initially filed towards Kelly, and the numerous public pushback prosecutors confronted throughout that point. Kelly was acquitted of these fees in 2008.
It wasn’t till years later, after allegations surfaced in articles published by journalist Jim Derogatis, that new investigations had been launched and Kelly was convicted in 2022 of a number of fees, sex trafficking and racketeering.
“It’s secret from the general public because power is part of the grooming,” she stated. “Being a pillar of society, a source of power, that precludes this from getting to the greater public, or creates resistance that the public would accept it.”
Combs’ attorneys vowed to combat the costs.
“He’s going to fight this to the end. “He’s innocent,” Combs’ lawyer Marc Agnifilo stated outdoors courtroom this week. “He came to New York to establish his innocence. He’s not afraid; he’s not afraid of the charges. There’s nothing that the government said in their presentation today that changes anyone’s mind about anything.”
Combs was ordered held with out bail. His attorneys have appealed the choice, arguing in a letter to the decide that the music star has taken a number of steps to show he’s not a flight threat, together with touring to New York with the intent to give up to authorities, and handing over his passport to his attorneys.
A decide on Wednesday ordered Combs to stay in custody till his trial.
