BFor the time being, the shady Metropolitan Detention Centre (MDC) in Rooklyn will be home to one of the most recognisable voices in American entertainment, Diddy, aka Sean Combs, whose business empire once seemed to know no bounds.
MDC is five miles (8 kilometers) from the Bedford-Stuyvesant public housing complex where Combs’ biggest star, Bad Boy Records’ Biggie Smalls, grew up, but more than 20 miles from Mount Vernon, the middle-class suburb where Combs himself grew up.
Smalls was murdered in Los Angeles in 1997, but Combs went on to build a fortune and global fame by blending street attitude with luxury consumer capitalism. But it all came crashing down last week. On Wednesday, a New York judge denied Combs’ $50 million bail, citing, in part, allegations of witness intimidation, before she was to stand trial on three criminal counts, including conspiracy to defraud, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, and transportation for prostitution.
It’s a stunning fall from grace, even in today’s celebrity-filled American world. At his peak, Combs could occasionally be seen cruising down New York’s Broadway in an open-top Bentley with baby blue flake paint and cream interior. It was an era of lavish finery, and he was its king.
“Puffy connected a lot of dots, connected people to a different kind of fascination and aspiration, and brought hip-hop to another part of the world,” Alan Wright, editor of Vibe magazine, told The Guardian earlier this year. “He saw the connection to the fashion world, the entertainment world. He wanted to see how big it could become.”
Combs launched a fragrance line, a popular clothing line called Sean John, and a vodka brand called Ciroc. He owned a $65 million superyacht called Malaya and a black private jet. He hosted famously all-white parties in the Hamptons and St. Tropez attended by politicians and socialites. He was featured in Vogue at the time and more recently in 2017 to promote his “modest” jewelry line.
But “modest” was not in the vocabulary used by federal prosecutors last week to describe Combs’ criminal conduct.
The defendants allege that Combs has engaged in serious criminal activity since 2009 and could face decades in prison if convicted. He has maintained his innocence. The charges against Combs appear to be based on a civil lawsuit filed by his former girlfriend, Me & You singer Cassie Ventura, and four others who allege he was raped and abused.
The indictment was filed by the Southern District of New York, a linchpin in the complex organized crime investigation that includes sex trafficking allegations against R. Kelly and Jeffrey Epstein.
US Attorney Damien Williams said Combs “used the business empire he controlled to commit criminal acts including sex trafficking, forced labour, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.”
Combs’s alleged drug-addled, “erratic behavior” over the course of days attracted enough attention to rival anything Caligula might have done at the height of Roman decadence.
“Combs abused and exploited women for years,” Williams said, adding that “Combs used force, threats of force and coercion to force his victims into engaging in extended sexual acts with male former commercial workers, some of whom he transported or had transported across state lines,” leading to the federal lawsuit.
Anna Kominsky, director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at New York Law School, warns against being fooled by the underlying allegations and the lewd nature of the alleged conduct.
“The main problem for Combs is the organized crime charges. This wasn’t just his individual conduct, it was an entire organization facilitating criminal activity. When organized crime charges are brought, it’s an uphill battle for the defense,” she said.
Combs’ lawyers have proposed a bail package that includes $50 million bail, jointly guaranteed by his mother and other family members, as well as home detention, surrender of his passport, weekly drug testing and nightly visitation records to be provided to authorities.
Combs’ lawyer, Mark Anifilo, argued there was “no coercion and no crime.”
But that didn’t work. After twice denying bail to Combs, Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr. suggested his bigger concern was “addressing the risk of obstruction of justice and the risk of witness tampering” rather than flight, after the court heard Combs had been in contact with a potential witness.
Agnifilo said the verdict was “not the outcome we wanted,” adding that “the fight continues.”
The 14-page indictment against Combs may not be the end of the government’s criminal prosecutions: Proving organized crime conspiracy requires co-conspirators, and none have been charged. Williams said the investigation is “ongoing.”
But Kominsky said co-conspirators don’t necessarily have to be indicted, and instead often become cooperating witnesses — bad news for Combs.
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“I think we’re going to see cases where people who were supposed to be co-conspirators are now collaborators,” Kominsky said. “Individuals who have entered into cooperation agreements may be prosecuted or may not be prosecuted at all because they cooperated.”
It is surprising how few people have come forward to support the former music mogul. A peculiarity of the Epstein case is that names in his notorious address book later confessed to never knowing him or having met him at all. The same can be said for the notorious movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who is currently incarcerated in a New York prison.
Influential radio host Charlaman Tha God predicted that if Combs is convicted, “there will be others involved” and that “they will probably go to prison.”
Rapper 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson III) tweeted a photo of himself with actor Drew Barrymore with the caption, “I’m good with Barrymore but I don’t have 1000 bottles of lube in my house,” a reference to the bottles of baby oil and lube found during a search of Combs’ home.
Danity Kane singer Aubrey O’Day, a frequent critic of Combs, said she felt “vindicated” by his arrest and that it was “a victory for women everywhere.”
As the criminal case against Combs progresses and prosecutors present evidence to his defense, including testimony from some 300 subpoenas issued to individuals to appear before a grand jury, it will inevitably examine how Combs was able to cover up wrongdoing in plain sight.
In 1999, writer Simon Reynolds called Combs a “dandy megalomaniac” and described himself as “the ultimate player, a hip-hop Donald Trump and a ‘black Sinatra’ all in one.”
Combs was born in Harlem in 1969. His father was murdered when he was three, and he grew up in the New York suburb of Mount Vernon. In contrast to many of his music stars, he was raised in a middle-class family. He was privately educated and studied business at Howard University.
After landing a job at Uptown Records, signs of trouble soon emerged: In 1991, a crowd broke out at a celebrity basketball game he was promoting, leaving seven people dead, and eight years later, an executive at Interscope Records claimed that Combs and two accomplices had broken into his office and beaten him.
Combs was arrested but later acquitted after a shooting at a nightclub that left three people wounded. Witnesses said they saw him with a gun. His lawyers argued that Combs would never have had a gun near his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez.
Daniel Smith, a former editor at Vibe magazine, recently claimed that a dispute with Combs over a cover story in 1997 led to death threats.
Questions will inevitably arise as to why it took so long to bring charges against Combs. Kominsky points out that organized crime cases can take years and, unlike the Kelly and Epstein cases, there are no allegations of sexual abuse of minors.
“We still don’t know anything about the alleged abuse,” Kominsky said, “and we know very little about the evidence the prosecution has in this case, but the defense tells us they were in negotiations with the prosecution before the indictment was filed, so they should know a lot more.”
In the image-driven world that Combs once lived in, that doesn’t look good.
