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Last Updated:May 18, 2025, 11:40 is

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have charged Sean Combs with racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution

The opening statements were heard in the trial of American music mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, who is accused of running an expansive sex trafficking operation over the course of two decades.

The 55-year-old rapper was arrested last September on charges of racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.

Combs has pleaded not guilty to all charges, but if he is found guilty, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Who Is Sean Combs?

Combs, who is better known by nicknames like Puff Daddy, P. Diddy and Diddy, began his career in the early 1990s as a hip-hop producer and record label executive.

Till the 2000s, during the heyday of Bad Boy Records, the label he co-founded, Combs nurtured the careers of artists like The Notorious B.I.G. (aka Biggie Smalls), Faith Evans and Mase.

He can be called the driving force to bringing the hip-hop community with mainstream pop — and made himself the face of Bad Boy. After Biggie was murdered in 1997, Combs himself became one of Bad Boy’s biggest artists, with hits like “I’ll Be Missing You” and “Been Around the World,” and continued to bring hip-hop into the pop music charts.

With assets including a clothing line (Sean John), TV production (including the MTV reality series “Making the Band”), and a lucrative liquor deal (developing the vodka brand Ciroc with the liquor conglomerate Diageo), Combs retooled himself as an entertainment and lifestyle brand.

By 2022, Combs had reportedly amassed a fortune of some $1 billion.

In 2022 and 2023, he was given lifetime achievement honours at both the BET Awards and the VMAs. In November 2023, his new album was nominated for a Grammy. But less than a week later, Cassie Ventura filed a civil lawsuit against Combs alleging years of physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

What Are The Crimes Combs Has Been Accused Of Committing?

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have charged Combs with racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.

In the current indictment, which was issued in April, the government alleges that between 2004 and 2024, Combs sexually trafficked three women, controlled them via physical and emotional abuse, paid them and others to keep quiet, and supplied alleged victims with a host of drugs to keep them compliant.

The indictment also said Combs elaborately planned, staged and often videotaped marathons of sex and drug use.

Besides, Combs is also facing dozens of civil lawsuits that followed one filed by his ex-girlfriend, the singer and model Cassie. In many of the lawsuits, the accusers say they were raped or sexually assaulted after being drugged at one of his lavish parties. Some alleged they were made to participate in one of the “freak offs”.

Meanwhile, the other co-founder of Bad Boy Records, Kirk Burrowes, sued Combs’ mother, Janice Combs, in February, claiming that she illegally assumed control of his 25% ownership stake in Bad Boy, after Sean Combs allegedly coerced him into signing over his share under threat of physical violence, as per NPR.

What About Racketeering?

Prosecutors allege that Combs used his business empire to fuel and conceal his criminal activities, and that he used his money, power, influence and employees to criminal ends.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, charged the rapper Young Thug with racketeering as well as several other gang, gun and drug offenses, accusing his YSL Records of simultaneously acting as a recording label and as a criminal street gang.

What Is Ex-Girlfriend Cassie Ventura’s Testimony?

Ventura testified in the federal sex trafficking, racketeering and prostitution case against Combs, whom she accuses of abusing her and coercing her into unwanted sex acts called the “freak-offs” during their 11-and-a-half-year relationship.

Ventura told the court that she met Combs when she was a 19-year-old aspiring musician. Combs, 17 years her senior, signed her onto his record label. Their romantic relationship began soon after, when Ventura fell in love with the “larger-than-life” musician and entrepreneur, she said.

She told the court that Combs wanted to control every aspect of her life. He paid for her rent, her car, and her phone, sometimes taking the items away to “punish” her when he was upset, she said.

She testified about the time when Combs attacked her because she was sleeping, slashing her eyebrow as he threw her onto the corner of her bed as her two friends tried to stop him.

In May 2024, CNN aired footage of Combs attacking Ventura in a hotel hallway in California, in which he kicked, shoved and dragged her – an incident that was part of Ventura’s complaint. Two days after CNN aired the video, Combs issued a public apology via Instagram, saying: “I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now.”

Ventura testified that the “freak-offs” were drug-fuelled marathons that could last from 36 hours to four days. She said they left her so drained that she needed days to recover. She said she had agreed to participate out of fear that Combs would become violent, as per a report by The New York Times.

Ventura ended her relationship with Combs for good in 2018, the same year she alleges the rapper raped her in her home as she cried.

Ventura went on to date and marry her personal trainer, Alex Fine, with whom she has two children, but the trauma of her relationship has stayed with her.

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