According to a federal document unsealed on Tuesday, the charges stem from 16 years of allegations and decades of rumours that Combs used his power to physically and sexually abuse women.
The indictment accuses Combs of using his lifestyle, media and music companies to help orchestrate a widespread criminal enterprise.
Participants in these criminal activities included Combs’s security, personal assistants and staff, according to the indictment.
These associates helped Combs abuse, threaten, and coerce women and others to “fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation and conceal his conduct”, the court filing alleges.
The crimes Combs and his associates are accused of committing and covering up include sex trafficking, narcotics distribution, arson and kidnapping. Many of these alleged crimes took place at illegal sex parties that Combs referred to as “freak offs”.
During these parties, Combs allegedly threw objects at the victims and dragged them by their hair. His associates allegedly booked hotel suites, recruited male sex workers and distributed narcotics, including cocaine, methamphetamine and oxycodone, to coerce partygoers into sex, according to the indictment.
Sean "Diddy" Combs has been arrested on charges stemming from 16 years of allegations of abuse and crimes. Photo / Getty Images
His staff allegedly monitored and arranged travel for victims and scheduled the delivery of IV fluids to help victims recover from the intense drug use and physical exertion, on his orders.
These parties were also taped, and Combs used the footage to pressure his victims to stay silent, the court filing says.
“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,” said Damian Williams, US attorney for the Southern District of New York.
“A year ago, Sean Combs stood in Times Square and was handed a key to New York City. Today, he’s been indicted and will face justice.”
The indictment highlights the vast extent to which the media mogul allegedly manipulated and abused those under his control for the entirety of his 30-year career.
A titan of the hip-hop industry, Combs built a commercial empire as a rapper, record producer and media mogul under the stage names Puff Daddy, Puffy, Love, P. Diddy and Diddy.
Not only did he develop some of the genre’s biggest artists — including the Notorious B.I.G., Mary J. Blige and Usher — he became one himself, topping the Billboard charts repeatedly and earning three Grammy Awards and 13 nominations.
His evolution — from record label intern to talent director, from party host to fashionista, from red-hot rookie to elder statesman — created a blueprint for rappers craving more than just a music career.
But Combs’s legacy has been recast in the past year, following a slew of sexual assault lawsuits and the surfacing of an explosive video showing the music impresario physically assaulting his then-girlfriend, the singer Cassie, in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel.
The agency did not publicly confirm the nature of the operation at the time, but a law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, told The Washington Post that the searches were part of a sex-trafficking investigation.
“We are disappointed with the decision to pursue what we believe is an unjust prosecution of Mr. Combs by the US attorney’s office. Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is a music icon, self-made entrepreneur, loving family man, and proven philanthropist who has spent the last 30 years building an empire, adoring his children, and working to uplift the Black community,” Marc Agnifilo, attorney for Combs, said in a statement.
“He is an imperfect person, but he is not a criminal,” Agnifilo added.
Marc Agnifilo, attorney for Sean “Diddy” Combs, arrives at Manhattan federal court on Tuesday. Photo / Getty Images
The lawsuits, taken together, portray Combs as a man who used his influence to serially abuse women throughout his career. Some of the alleged incidents took place at the “freak offs,” drug-fueled parties involving trafficked sex workers and physical and sexual abuse, according to the indictment.
The first suit was filed on November 16, 2023, by Cassie, who dated Combs between 2007 and 2018, when she was a singer signed to his Bad Boy record label.
Her suit accused Combs of more than a decade of “abuse, violence and sex trafficking,” including an incident at a hotel where, Cassie claimed, Combs assaulted her and later paid hotel staff to obtain the security footage.
The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount a day after it was filed, with Combs maintaining his innocence.
Months later, on May 17, surveillance footage obtained by CNN showed Combs assaulting Cassie in 2016 at the InterContinental Los Angeles Century City hotel. The video clips showed Combs pursuing her down a hallway, throwing her to the floor and dragging her off camera.
Combs apologised on May 19 on Instagram after the video was released. “My behaviour on that video is inexcusable,” he said. “I take full responsibility for my actions in that video”.
In early July, reports began emerging that a federal grand jury in New York was weighing evidence against Combs. At that time, eight people had accused the famed music executive of sexually assaulting or trafficking them. The allegations spanned the length of Combs’s career, with several women accusing him of raping and drugging them in the 1990s.
Liza Gardner accused Combs and singer-songwriter Aaron Hall of raping her in 1990 in a lawsuit. Joi Dickerson-Neal alleged that Combs drugged and raped her in 1991. Crystal McKinney, a former model, accused Combs of drugging and raping her during New York Fashion Week in 2003.
In another suit, April Lampros alleged that Combs had raped her multiple times between 1995 and 2000, when she was a fashion student. Lampros said in court documents that Combs had promised to mentor her.
Four people, including Cassie, alleged that Combs engaged in sex trafficking. In court documents, he has been accused of transporting and coercing them to perform sexual acts, as well as recruiting and hiring sex workers for his parties.
A lawsuit filed in December claimed that Combs and others in 2003 trafficked and raped a 17-year-old, identified in court filings as Jane Doe. In February, Rodney Jones, a producer who worked with Combs on his 2023 project, The Love Album, accused Combs and others of sexual assault as well as drug and sex-trafficking.
Combs has vehemently denied all the allegations against him. On March 26, his attorney Aaron Dyer called the allegations “a witch hunt based on meritless accusations”.
Diddy at the 2022 Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas. Photo / Getty Images
Born in New York City in 1969, Combs started his career as an intern at Andre Harrell’s Uptown Records, which signed future hip-hop and R&B stars such as Heavy D, Mary J. Blige and Jodeci.
He had a knack for the work and dropped out of Howard University to accept a promotion to talent manager.
Harrell fired Combs in 1993 after just three years, telling the Wall Street Journal at the time: “I knew it was time for him to grow”.
He did, at a dizzying pace. Days later, Combs founded Bad Boy Records — which would sign the Notorious B.I.G., Faith Evans and Mase and reach a valuation of US$100 million ($161.1m) at its peak.
Combs helped define the sound of 1990s hip-hop with B.I.G.’s Hypnotize and Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems, and Evans’s Soon as I Get Home. Rapping under the name Puff Daddy, Combs found success with No Way Out in 1997, which topped the Billboard 200 and went seven-times platinum.
The album’s tribute to B.I.G. after his death, I’ll Be Missing You, spent 11 weeks at the top of the charts and seared into the mind of hip-hop fans the image of Combs dancing in memory of the fallen rapper.
In subsequent decades, Combs branched into other industries. He started a fashion and fragrance brand called Sean John, starred in two reality TV shows, launched a news network, partnered with the vodka line Cîroc and opened two restaurants.
In 2002, Forbes ranked him 12th on its list of entrepreneurs under 40. By 2022, Combs was a billionaire.
Along the way, he earned a reputation as a 21st-century Jay Gatsby for throwing lavish, themed soirees attended by A-listers such as Paris Hilton, Ashton Kutcher and Kim Kardashian — most notably the White Party he hosted every Labor Day weekend in the Hamptons from 1998 to 2009.
An invite to the White Party in the early 2000s was akin to being on the cover of Rolling Stone in the 1970s: It cemented the recipient as an A-list star.
In recent years, Combs became one of hip-hop’s elder statesmen. He had the discography and accolades to support his status, racking up three Grammy Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards and an NAACP Image Award (for his role in the 2009 television adaptation of the Broadway classic, A Raisin in the Sun). Howard University gave him an honorary degree; MTV, a Global Icon award; and BET honored him with a Lifetime Achievement award, which he accepted to a hail of applause and cheers.
The glitz and glamour of his empire may have obscured a shadow that was suggested from the very start of his career. “Puff Daddy,” he explained to Jet Magazine in 1998, was a childhood nickname, based on how he would “huff and puff” when he was angry. “I had a temper,” he said.
Combs speaks onstage during the 94th Oscars at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood in 2022. Photo / Getty Images
He was found guilty of criminal mischief for threatening a New York Post photographer in 1996, in what would be the first of many run-ins with the law. An AIDS fundraiser that Combs promoted in 1991 was thronged, resulting in a stampede that killed nine people. Friends and colleagues publicly accused him of swindling them; reports circulated of him scuffling with other rappers and, once, his son’s college football coach.
Combs occasionally addressed the bad headlines; frequently, he charged his accusers with attempting to exploit his name and wealth.
But in the public eye, a portrait began to emerge of an angry, controlling and violent man clad in thousand-dollar suits.
His record label became central to the East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry of the mid ‘90s, which pitted Bad Boy’s Notorious B.I.G. against Tupac Shakur, an artist with California’s Death Row records.
A war of words culminated in the slayings of Shakur and B.I.G., the biggest hip-hop talents of their generation.
In April 1999, Combs was arrested and charged with two felonies over the beating of a record executive, who later asked for the charges to be dismissed. (They were.)
Seven months later, Combs and his then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez were arrested after they were caught fleeing a shooting at a New York club with a gun under the front passenger seat of their car. Combs was acquitted on charges of weapons violations, but Bad Boy rapper Shyne was convicted of assault and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Multiple people filed lawsuits accusing Combs of assaulting or threatening them, including a local TV host and his former Making the Band co-star Laurieann Gibson. The show, which debuted in 2000, portrayed Combs as a mogul. (A civil jury ruled in favor of Combs over the TV host; Combs rejected Gibson’s allegations, and nothing came of a police complaint she filed.)
Former artists from Bad Boy’s golden era have publicly accused him of manipulative business practices. Mark Curry, who was once signed to the Bad Boy label, wrote a 2009 book about Combs titled Dancing with the Devil, alleging that Combs physically abused his former partner Kim Porter. Porter, who died of pneumonia in 2018, alleged infidelity in their relationship, but she never publicly addressed rumors of physical abuse.
In light of the events of the last year — the lawsuits, the nationally televised raid and, now, federal charges — more of those in Combs’s circle have gone public with stories alleging abuse or manipulation. For some, these accusations aren’t just an indictment of a powerful man, but also an entire industry. In a January interview, Curry talked about spiking drinks at hip-hop parties and giving women pills — activities Combs has been accused of in recent lawsuits.
“[It] was part of the hip-hop culture. We didn’t see nothin’ wrong with it until Bill Cosby got in trouble,” he said.
