Entertainment mogul, Sean Combs aka Diddy has been indicted on three serious charges, including sex trafficking, racketeering, and transportation to e
Entertainment mogul, Sean Combs aka Diddy has been indicted on three serious charges, including sex trafficking, racketeering, and transportation to engage in prostitution.
The indictment, unsealed on Tuesday by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, portrays Combs as the leader of a criminal enterprise that, for years, allegedly engaged in the abuse, coercion, and exploitation of women.
According to the indictment, the 54 year old is accused of running an operation that involved a range of illegal activities, including forced labour, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice.
The prosecutors further allege that Combs’ business employees were instrumental in helping him commit these crimes.
A 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 would 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.
Comb’s 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”.
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 Cassandra Ventura aka Cassie, 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 to ensure silence” after that assault, which the indictment describes without naming Ventura.
The indictment documents 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 his criminal enterprise at the time the indictment got unsealed on Tuesday.
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 that Combs would plead not guilty.
Combs was recognized as one of the most influential figures in hip-hop before the flood of allegations against him turned him into an industry pariah.
Click on links below to view the indictment documents and detention memo
