Music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs was arrested in Manhattan by federal agents on Monday evening based on a sealed indictment, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York said.
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The indictment is sealed and the charges were not announced but Marc Agnifilo, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, said he believed he was being charged with racketeering and sex trafficking.
A statement from Mr. Combs’s legal team said they were disappointed with the decision to prosecute him and noted that he had been cooperative with the investigation and had “voluntarily relocated to New York last week in anticipation of these charges.”
“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,” the statement said. “He is an imperfect person but he is not a criminal.”
Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement posted on social media late Monday that “we expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time.”
Mr. Agnifilo said Mr. Combs had been arrested by officers with Homeland Security Investigations at about 8:30 p.m. at the hotel where he was staying, the Park Hyatt New York on 57th Street. It is expected he will be held overnight and then arraigned on Tuesday.
The arrest of Mr. Combs, 54, makes him the highest-profile figure in the music world to face criminal charges for sexual misconduct since R. Kelly, the R&B singer who, after trials in New York and Chicago, was sentenced to more than 30 years in prison for child sex crimes, sex trafficking and racketeering.
Mr. Combs, 54, who is also known as Diddy and Puff Daddy, was a key figure in the global rise of hip-hop as a commercial force in the 1990s and 2000s, helping to make stars of rappers and R&B singers like the Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige. But he has been under intense public scrutiny since a former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, filed a lawsuit last November accusing him of years of sexual and physical abuse.
Mr. Combs settled the suit with Ms. Ventura — an R&B singer known as Cassie, who had been signed to Mr. Combs’s record label — in one day, and denied any wrongdoing. But legal pressure mounted over the next nine months, with the filing of five lawsuits by women alleging sexual assault and three other sexual misconduct suits, all of which Mr. Combs’s lawyers are fighting in court.
Mr. Combs’s legal team said in the statement that “these are the acts of an innocent man with nothing to hide, and he looks forward to clearing his name in court.”
In March, federal agents raided Mr. Combs’s homes in Los Angeles and Miami Beach, Fla., stopping him at a Miami-area airport and confiscating his electronic devices. The authorities made no announcements at the time, but a federal official said the inquiry was at least in part a human trafficking investigation. Federal prosecutors in New York had by that time interviewed a number of witnesses about sexual misconduct allegations against Mr. Combs, according to a person familiar with the interviews.
Mr. Combs has vehemently denied the accusations in the civil suits, calling them “sickening allegations” from people looking for “a quick payday.” His lawyers have sharply criticized how the raids — which involved agents from Homeland Security Investigations brandishing guns — were carried out, calling them a “gross overuse of military-level force.”
That tone of defiance shifted after CNN published hotel surveillance footage in May that showed Mr. Combs physically assaulting and kicking Ms. Ventura in 2016. Mr. Combs posted an apology video to social media in which he called his behavior “inexcusable” and said he had sought out professional help.
A prolific producer and gifted impresario, Mr. Combs helped usher hip-hop into the mainstream with his record label, Bad Boy Entertainment. He also created a raffish, larger-than-life media persona, throwing celebrity-filled parties and presiding over a popular MTV reality competition show, “Making the Band,” in the mid-2000s. And he established a lucrative brand portfolio including fashion, liquor and a cable TV network, Revolt.
For decades, Mr. Combs has been trailed by accusations of violence, though this is the first time he is known to have faced such a sprawling investigation into his conduct over a period of years. In 2001, he was the subject of a highly publicized trial over a nightclub shooting, where he was acquitted on gun and bribery charges.
In recent years, he adopted a new persona, asking people to call him Love, naming his newest daughter Love and titling his first solo studio album in 17 years “The Love Album: Off the Grid,” which he released, independently, under a new label, Love Records.
Last year, Mr. Combs was just coming off a swirl of positive publicity tied to that album and his long career in music when Ms. Ventura filed suit with detailed and disturbing allegations stretching over more than a decade. Her complaint included accusations of sex trafficking and said that Mr. Combs had forced Ms. Ventura to have sex with male prostitutes in front of him, and instructed her to use websites and escort services to find prostitutes to participate in drug-fueled encounters he called “freak offs.”
Mr. Combs has decided to settle only Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit; his legal team has fought the rest in court, painting the allegations as false stories drummed up to secure settlements.
In court filings, his lawyers said that a lawsuit accusing him of participating in a gang rape in 2003 had “singlehandedly irreparably damaged” Mr. Combs’s reputation on the basis of “rank, uncorroborated allegations.” And after a male music producer accused Mr. Combs in a lawsuit of making unwanted sexual contact with him, a lawyer for Mr. Combs called the plaintiff a “liar” whose accusations were “pure fiction” meant to garner headlines.
Since those lawsuits were filed, much of Mr. Combs’s brand portfolio has fallen apart.
He sold his stake in Revolt and his share of DeLeón tequila, a partnership with the spirits conglomerate Diageo. A New York charter school network ended its partnership with him.
This month, Mr. Combs’s mansion in the ritzy Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, where federal agents carried out a raid in March, was listed on the real estate market for $61.5 million.
In the #MeToo movement and its aftermath, prosecutors have increasingly turned to sex trafficking laws to try sexual assault accusations in the federal court system. The first conviction of Mr. Kelly was on charges of racketeering and violations of an anti-sex-trafficking law known as the Mann Act.
Homeland Security Investigations, which often investigates sex trafficking cases, led the inquiry into Mr. Combs. The March raids were announced to the world in television news footage of agents converging on Mr. Combs’s sprawling Los Angeles mansion and carrying out electronics; the mother of one of his sons later shared footage of agents pointing guns at Justin and Christian Combs while they were being detained inside their father’s home.
Since then, federal prosecutors have been silent, quietly delivering subpoenas to potential witnesses as they built their case against Mr. Combs.
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