Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ Stunning Fall From Music Mogul to Criminal Charges

BThe dark Metropolitan Prison (MDC) in Rooklyn will soon become the home of Diddy, also known as Sean Combs, one of the most famous representatives of the American entertainment industry, whose business empire once seemed to have no limits.

MDC is five miles from the public housing projects in Bedford-Stuyvesant where Biggie Smalls, Combs’s Bad Boy Records star, grew up, but more than 20 miles from the middle-class suburb of Mount Vernon where Combs himself grew up.

Smalls was murdered in Los Angeles in 1997, but Combs amassed a fortune and global fame by combining streetwise attitude with luxury consumer capitalism. But it all crashed and burned last week. A New York judge on Wednesday denied Combs’ $50 million bail, in part because of witness intimidation allegations, ahead of his trial on three criminal charges, including conspiracy to commit racketeering; human trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; and transportation for the purpose of prostitution.

It’s a stunning fall, even in a world of American celebrity that is now awash with it. At his peak, Combs could sometimes be seen cruising down Broadway in New York in an open-top Bentley with light blue paint and cream upholstery. It was an era of ostentatious glamour, and he was its king.

“Puffy connected a lot of dots, connected people to a different kind of glamour and aspiration and took hip-hop to a different place in the world,” Alan Light, editor of Vibe magazine, told the Guardian earlier this year. “He saw the connections to the fashion world, to the entertainment world. He wanted to see how big it could be.”

Combs launched a perfume; a successful clothing line, Sean John; and a vodka brand, Cîroc. He owned a $65 million superyacht, the Maraya, and a black private jet. He threw famous white parties in the Hamptons and St. Tropez, attended by politicians and society arbiters; he was featured in Vogue and, as recently as 2017, he was promoting a line of “modest” jewelry.

But the words “restraint” were not in the dictionary federal prosecutors used to describe Combs’ alleged criminal activity last week.

They allege that since 2009, he has engaged in serious crimes that, if convicted, could lock him up for decades. He has pleaded not guilty. The charges against Combs appear to be based in part on civil claims filed by ex-girlfriend and Me & U singer Cassie Ventura and four others who allege rape and abuse.

The indictment comes from the Southern District of New York, a federal district that has been handling complex extortion investigations, including those of R. Kelly and others, such as Jeffrey Epstein, on sex trafficking allegations.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Combs “used the business empire he controlled to conduct criminal activities, including sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.”

Much attention has been paid to Combs’s alleged days-long, drug-fueled “freak outings,” which seemed like they might challenge anything Caligula might summon to Rome’s debauched summit.

“Combs abused and exploited women for years,” Williams said, adding that Combs “used force, threats of force and coercion to compel the victims to engage in prolonged sexual intercourse with commercial sex workers, some of whom he transported or arranged to transport across state lines,” making the case a federal case.

Anna Cominsky, director of the criminal defense clinic at New York Law School, cautions against suggestions that the accusations and alleged conduct are indecent.

“The main problem for Combs with the extortion charge is that it’s not just about his personal conduct, but rather that he had this whole organization that helped facilitate his criminal activity. When you have an extortion charge, the defense has an uphill battle,” she said.

Combs’ attorneys had proposed a bail package that included a $50 million bond co-signed by his mother and other family members, as well as house arrest, passport surrender, weekly drug tests and a visitor log that would be turned over to authorities each night.

Marc Agnifilo, Combs’ attorney, said: “There is no coercion or crime here.”

But that didn’t work. After denying Combs bail twice, Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr. indicated his greater concern was not that he fled, but “addressing the dangers of obstructing justice and the dangers of witness tampering,” after the court learned that Combs had allegedly contacted potential witnesses.

The ruling, Agnifilo said, “was not what we wanted,” adding: “The fight continues.”

The 14-page indictment against Combs may not be the end of the government’s criminal charges. To prove an extortion conspiracy, there must be co-conspirators, and no one has been charged. Williams said the investigation is “ongoing.”

But according to Cominsky, co-conspirators do not have to be charged and, on the contrary, often serve as co-witnesses, which is bad news for Combs.

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“I think you’re going to see alleged co-conspirators who are now collaborators,” Cominsky said. “And there could be charges against people who entered into cooperation agreements, or there could be no charges at all because of their cooperation.”

What is striking, but not surprising, is how few people have come out in support of the former music mogul. A hallmark of Epstein’s case was that the names in his infamous address book later claimed they didn’t know him or barely knew him. The same was true of disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein — now also in a New York jail cell.

Influential radio host Charlamagne Tha God predicted that if Combs is convicted, “there will be others involved” who will “probably go to prison.”

Rapper 50 Cent – Curtis Jackson III – posted a photo of himself and actor Drew Barrymore on Twitter with the caption, “Here I am, keeping (Barrymore) company and I don’t have 1000 bottles of lube in my house,” referring to the bottles of baby oil and lube found during the search of Combs’ homes.

Danity Kane singer Aubrey O’Day, who has frequently criticized Combs, said she felt “vindicated” by his arrest and called it a “victory for women everywhere.”

As the criminal case against Combs progresses and prosecutors turn over evidence to his defense, including testimony from some 300 grand jury subpoenas, there will inevitably be scrutiny of how Combs managed to conceal his apparent evil in the face of such a scheme.

Writer Simon Reynolds described Combs in 1999 as an “elegant megalomaniac” who billed himself as “an unrivaled player, a sort of hip-hop Donald Trump and ‘black Sinatra’ rolled into one.”

Combs was born in Harlem in 1969. His father was murdered when he was three, and Combs was raised in the New York suburb of Mount Vernon. Unlike many stars in his musical stable, he had a middle-class life. He was educated privately and studied business at Howard University.

After landing a job at Uptown Records, signs of trouble soon appeared. In 1991, seven people died in a stampede at an all-star basketball game he was promoting. Eight years later, an Interscope Records executive claimed that Combs and two associates burst into his office and beat him up.

Combs was arrested — and later acquitted — after a nightclub shooting that left three people wounded. Witnesses said they saw Combs with a gun. His lawyers have argued that Combs did not keep the gun on his girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, who was with him at the time.

Danyel Smith, Vibrations The magazine’s former editor-in-chief recently blamed Combs for a 1997 cover dispute that led to a death threat.

Questions will inevitably arise about why it took so long to prosecute Combs. Cominsky points out that extortion cases can drag on for years, and unlike the Kelly and Epstein cases, there are no allegations of sexual abuse of minors.

“We just don’t know anything about the allegations of abuse yet,” Cominsky said. “We know so little about this case, so little about the evidence that prosecutors have. But based on what defense attorneys have said, they know more because they negotiated with prosecutors before this indictment was filed.”

In Combs’ previous world – where image was everything – this didn’t look good.