Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy Entertainment has mixed music, video, fashion, liquor and style into a billionaire business at the show business powerhouse.
Combs praised his visionary growth and brand management.
But federal prosecutors have another word from a bad boy: assault corporations.
A federal trial in New York City includes allegations that Combs was involved in mob family-style assaults with coercion, trickery, threats and assaults committed to cover up patterns of sexual assault, sex trafficking and prostitution.
The mogul has maintained his innocence publicly and rebelliously, even before his arrest last September.
Federal accusations claim Comb and his associates often seduced female victims. Combs is then said to use force, threats of power, coercion, and controlled substances to allow women to engage in sexual intercourse with male prostitutes and occasionally watch them at rally known as “Frak-Offs.” Combs has forced women to “ketamine, ecstasy and GHB” while performing, prosecutors say.
Combs’ “criminal corporation” suspicions have threatened and abused women and worked to engage in sex trafficking, forced labor and interstate transport to engage in prostitution, inducement, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, inducements, induc In bringing the so-called RICO accusations, prosecutors said in a statement opening a statement that Combs was helped by executives of the company’s employees, security staff and aides. They allegedly helped organize a “freak-off” and covered up the incident. So far, it is the only comb facing criminal charges related to the investigation.
Did the prosecutor make the allegation?
What the prosecutor presented
Prosecutors have so far called nearly 30 witnesses in the Manhattan stands, and are expected to end up with witnesses this week.
They include three women who identified national defense as key witnesses, including Onetime Lover from Combs and Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, who described graphic sexual assault. The 2023 Ventura lawsuit sparked the unravelling of Combs Enterprises with details of gender, violence and freak-off.
His last ex-girlfriend, who was only referred to as Jane in the courtroom, explained how freak-off and forced sex continued despite the raids that led to the arrest in the lawsuit and Homeland Security investigation.
She texted the Ventura lawsuit comb page shortly after it was filed.
“I’ve been crying for three days and I’m feeling stressed reading all of this. I’ve been having nightmares about forced nights. I feel like I can’t say no. I feel like I’m reading my sexual trauma,” she writes.
On another occasion, she texted his Chief of Staff about the threat he committed, saying, “He only threatened me with two phones about my sex tape. He said he would expose me and send me to the father of the child.”
Jane is one of three women whose testimony is at the heart of the trial. The others are Ventura and former employees, who testify under the pseudonym of MIA.
Was the bad boy a criminal business?
Under the affected corrupt organizational law known as RICO, there are 35 specific crimes, including temptation, murder, bribery and tor, and federal prosecutors must present a pattern that involves at least two obvious acts as part of a criminal enterprise.
Former federal prosecutor Neema Ramani said to prove RICO, prosecutors must show the existence of not only criminal activities but actual criminal enterprises.
People usually think about mobs, street gangs, or drug cartels. But like Combs’ aides, there is enough loose connection between two or more people, she said.
It must also exhibit two or more patterns of RICO predicate action over a decade.
That’s why evidence of bribery, inducement, obstruction, witness tampering and prostitution is important in the prosecution’s case, she said.
It is up to the ju judge to determine whether federal prosecutors have proven RICO’s charges.
R&B singer Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura, who had a long relationship with Combs, was an important witness in the early days of the prosecution’s case.
Ventura testified that she felt “confined” in the cycle of physical and sexual abuse by him, and that the relationship included 11 years of be-stripping, sexually terrifying mail and rape.
She alleged that Combs threatened to leak videos of sexual encounters with numerous male sex workers.
One of these freak-offs led to the infamous hotel assault, Ventura testified. In the video footage from the night of March 2016, Combs punches, kicks Ventura and tries to protect himself in front of the elevator bank at the LA hotel. He then drags her into the hall towards his hotel room in her hooded sweatshirt.
A second angle from another camera catches a comb throwing a vase towards her. She suffered from the bruises, fat lips and bruises that the prosecutors showed during the film’s premiere two days later, and wore sunglasses and heavy makeup on the red carpet.
The cover-up continued, according to prosecutors. Ventura said police had visited her apartment. She answered some of their questions, but told the ju-decided that she still wanted to protect the comb.
“I wouldn’t say who I am talking about,” she told the ju judge. “At that moment, I didn’t want to hurt him that way. There was too much going on. There was a lot of it.”
Eddie Garcia, a security guard at the InterContinental Hotel, testified that he gave him a brown paper bag containing $100,000 in cash on the video.
Garcia met up with Combs, Combs chief Christina Hollum and the bodyguard after the supervisor agreed to sell the video recordings. After Garcia raised concerns about the police, he told him that Combs would be called Ventura on FaceTime, handed him the phone and told Ventura to tell Garcia he wanted him to “walk away.” Garcia then said he would take the money and split it up with his colleagues.
Capricorn Clark, a former assistant at Combs, recalls the 2011 violent incident with Combs.
Clark told the ju umpire he forced her from her apartment from the muzzle to go to musician Kid Kudi’s house in December 2011. To avoid law enforcement involvement, Clark testified, and Combs ordered her to call Ventura. “If you don’t convince him of that, I’ll kill you everything…” Clark quoted Combs as saying.
Kudi testified that his Porsche was later bombed in his driveway with a Molotov cocktail.
Ventura was not the only suspected victim of a sex crime. Mia, an assistant who testifies under that name, described years of sexual abuse, rape and threats. Combs first sexually assaulted her at a 40th birthday party in New York in 2009, she said, shortly after she began working for him. In the years that followed, she slept in his bedroom. She shed tears, she testified that he had raped her. “I was frozen. I didn’t respond. I was terribly confused, embarrassed and scared.” Another attack occurred in the bedroom closet, where Combs grabbed her by the head and said he had forced her to have oral sex with him.
Under cross-examination, she said she initially refused to tell federal prosecutors that she had sexually assaulted them, and admitted to sending Comb’s loving message years after the alleged attack.
His recent ex-girlfriend Jane explained how she endured a drug-fueled sex marathon until the arrest of hip-hop Titan.
Ventura’s friend Bryana Bongolan testified that Combs hanged her on a 17-storey balcony and threw her into the furniture on her balcony in September 2016.
“I will never forget that he is holding me on that balcony,” she said the defense attorney challenged the date when Combs had evidence elsewhere in hotels around the country.
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