In November 2023, the singer Cassie (real name Casandra Ventura) filed an explosive federal lawsuit against her former partner Sean “Diddy” Combs, claiming he had been physically and sexually abusive throughout their relationship. The complaint alleged that Combs’s abuse ranged from beating Ventura and forcing her to have sex with other men to raping her at her home in 2018. The rapper settled the lawsuit within a day. But since then, seven more women and two men have sued Combs, accusing him of a wide range of abusive behavior including sexual harassment, rape, nonconsensual pornography, and sex trafficking. The situation escalated in March when federal agents raided Combs’s properties in Miami and Los Angeles, and then on September 16, federal agents arrested Combs at a Manhattan hotel following a grand-jury indictment. The music mogul was charged with racketeering and sex trafficking, to which he pleaded not guilty. A judge ruled that he be held without bail until trial.
Following the raids, Combs’s lawyer Aaron Dyer maintained that his client is “innocent and will continue to fight every single day to clear his name.” The music mogul has denied all of his accusers’ allegations. “I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy,” he said in December. “Sickening allegations have been made against me by individuals looking for a quick payday. Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged.”
However, in May, CNN published graphic security footage showing Combs assaulting Ventura in a hotel back in 2016, which lines up closely with the allegations in her suit. Following the leak, Combs issued a video apology, saying, “My behavior on that video is inexcusable.” CNN has reported that federal investigators are preparing to bring the allegations against Combs to a grand jury, suggesting the Department of Justice may seek an indictment. And in September, one of the alleged victims was awarded $100 million by a Michigan judge after Diddy failed to show up to court and contest the allegations.
Here’s everything you need to know about the accusations against Combs.
Cassie alleged she was the victim of a pattern of “abuse, violence, and sex trafficking.”
Ventura sued under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which gave victims a onetime one-year window to sue their alleged sexual abusers and institutions even if the statute of limitations had run out. (The window expired in November.) She says she first met Combs in 2005, when she was 19 and he was 37. In the lawsuit, she alleges that Combs controlled nearly every aspect of her life, from her career to her personal medical records. She claims he was frequently violent, physically abusing her “multiple times a year,” and that he often plied her with “copious amounts of drugs.”
The complaint also claims that Combs forced Ventura to have sex with male sex workers in different cities — encounters she says he watched, masturbated to, and recorded. The singer says she never went to the police because she was afraid that doing so “would merely give Mr. Combs another excuse to hurt her.” She also alleges that, following a dinner in 2018, Combs forced himself into her apartment and raped her while she “repeatedly said ‘no’ and tried to push him away.” Ventura says she ended the relationship for good afterward.
In her lawsuit, she referred to multiple witnesses who saw the abuse take place. One of them is her friend, singer-songwriter Tiffany Red, who wrote an open letter to Combs describing an incident on Ventura’s 29th-birthday party in 2015. Ventura and Red claim that that night, Combs and his security team forced Ventura to leave because he wanted her to have sexual encounters with other men. In a statement to the New York Times, Combs’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman said Combs denied the allegations and that the lawsuit was “riddled with baseless and outrageous lies, aiming to tarnish Mr. Combs’s reputation and seeking a payday.” Ventura and Combs settled the lawsuit one day after it was filed; the details remain private. Brafman said that the settlement “is in no way an admission of wrongdoing.”
Video shows Diddy assaulting Cassie back in 2016.
In May, CNN released security footage showing Combs assaulting Ventura in the elevator bay at the now-closed InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles in 2016. The video appears to support a similar incident Ventura described in her suit. ��[Combs] followed her into the hallway of the hotel while yelling at her. He grabbed at her, and then took glass vases in the hallway and threw them at her, causing glass to crash around them as she ran to the elevator to escape,” Ventura’s complaint reads.
After the video was made public, Combs posted an apology video on Instagram. “I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now. I went and I sought out professional help. I got into going to therapy, going to rehab. I had to ask God for his mercy and grace,” Combs said. “I’m so sorry.”
In an interview with Piers Morgan, Combs’s former head of security said he wasn’t surprised by the footage because he witnessed the rapper being violent toward women “four or five times.” Roger Bonds, who worked for the mogul for a decade, alleged he had seen Combs be violent toward Cassie and his former partner Kim Porter, with whom he shares three children. (Porter died in 2018 from pneumonia.)
Nine more people have come forward with allegations against Diddy.
Following Ventura’s settlement, Liza Gardner filed a lawsuit on November 23. She says she and a friend met Combs and singer-songwriter Aaron Hall at an MCA Records event in 1990 or 1991. They returned to Hall’s apartment for an after-party, where Gardner says she was “offered more drinks and was coerced into having sex with Combs.” She says Combs also assaulted her friend. The lawsuit claims the encounter left Gardner “shocked and traumatized,” and as she got dressed, Hall allegedly “barged into the room, pinned her down, and forced [her] to have sex with him.” Gardner claims that Combs came to the home she shared with her friend a few days later and allegedly attacked her again. He came to the house looking for the friend because he was worried she would tell the “girl he was with at the time,” according to the suit.
In another complaint filed the same day, Joi Dickerson-Neal alleges that in 1991, she “reluctantly” went on a date with Combs, who “intentionally drugged” and sexually assaulted her after their dinner. She claims that Combs recorded the assault and showed the tape to other people. While Dickerson-Neal did not go to the authorities immediately after the alleged assault, she says she did eventually file a police report with unspecified agencies in New York and New Jersey. The complaint says prosecutors told her they’d need to corroborate her allegations, but she believes possible witnesses were “terrified that Combs would retaliate against them and that they would lose future business and music opportunities if they made a statement” backing her account.
A spokesperson for Diddy said the two women’s claims are “fabricated” and accused them of exploiting the Adult Survivors Act. Another woman, referred to as Jane Doe in the complaint, filed a fourth lawsuit on December 6, alleging that Combs, his longtime lieutenant Harve Pierre, and a third unidentified assailant trafficked her across state lines from Detroit to New York City and gang-raped her at Combs’s Manhattan recording studio in 2003, when she was 17 years old. (Pierre, who previously served as president of Combs’s Bad Boy Entertainment, has also been sued by a former assistant, who alleges he “used his position of authority as plaintiff’s boss to groom, exploit, and sexually assault” her several times between 2016 and 2017.)
In February, Combs’s former producer and videographer filed a federal lawsuit against the mogul, alleging Combs sexually harassed, drugged, and threatened him. According to the lawsuit, Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones worked on Combs’s most recent album, Love, and lived with him between September 2022 and November 2023. Jones alleges he “was the victim of constant unsolicited and unauthorized groping and touching of his anus by Mr. Combs.” On one occasion, the lawsuit claims, Jones woke up naked and disoriented in bed with Combs and two sex workers.The complaint also claims that, in his role as Combs’s videographer, Jones “secured HUNDREDS of hours of footage and audio recordings of Mr. Combs, his staff, and his guests engaging in serious illegal activity.” The illegal activity the suit alleges includes acquiring drugs, soliciting sex workers, providing laced drinks to minors, and sexual assault.
Jones’s suit names several other defendants, including Combs’s son Justin; Combs’s chief of staff, Kristina Khorram; Universal Music Group CEO Sir Lucian Grainge; and former Motown Records CEO Ethiopia Habtemariam. Combs’s lawyer, Shawn Holley, denied Jones’s allegations.
In April, a separate lawsuit was filed against Combs’s son Christian Combs, in which a woman alleged that the 26-year-old drugged her and sexually assaulted her on a yacht chartered by the music mogul in December 2022. The suit also names Combs as a defendant. In her complaint, Grace O’Marcaigh accused the rapper of aiding and abetting his son. O’Marcaigh, who worked on the yacht as a steward, also claimed she witnessed partying and drug use between celebrities and “constant rotation of suspected sex workers.”
Then, in May, another suit was filed in federal court by Crystal McKinney, who alleges Combs forced her to perform oral sex on him in 2003. The lawsuit was brought under New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Act, which gives survivors a two-year look-back window to file civil claims against their alleged abusers after the statute of limitations has passed. Combs has yet to comment on the allegations.
On May 24, April Lampros became the seventh person to file a suit against Combs, accusing him of drugging and assaulting her over several years beginning in 1995, per NBC. Lampros claims she first met Combs in 1994, when she was a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She alleges that the next year, she met up with him at a bar and gave into pressure from Combs to drink because of his “delusional and violent outbursts.” After a few sips, Lampros felt “uneasy” and says she was guided into a car that took her and Combs to a hotel, where he forcibly kissed and grabbed her. Despite her telling him to stop and saying that she felt unwell, “Ms. Lampros was being raped by Mr. Combs, and she soon passed out,” the lawsuit claims. Lampros says that after the incident, Combs wooed her back by sending lavish gifts and flowers. Per NBC, the lawsuit includes a photo of a handwritten Valentine’s Day card signed from “Puffy.”
Combs allegedly assaulted Lampros for a second time later in 1995 and a third time in 1996, forcing her and his then-girlfriend, Kim Porter, to take ecstasy and have sex with one another. Lampros says that she “vocally opposed this idea,” but Combs reminded her that “he could make her lose her job,” the suit claims. Lampros claims that Combs watched the women while he masturbated before sexually assaulting her.
The eighth accuser, Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith, sued Combs alleging the producer drugged and sexually assaulted him at a party in Detroit in 1997. Cardello-Smith, 51, says that he met Diddy while working at a restaurant. The men allegedly went to a party, where they met a group of women, and later had sex with them. The lawsuit claims that Combs offered Cardello-Smith a drink, which he believes was spiked. He alleges he passed out and woke up to the producer having sex with a woman and telling him, “I did this to you too.”
Cardello-Smith was convicted of sexual misconduct in a separate case and is currently incarcerated. At a preliminary hearing conducted virtually in August, he testified that Combs offered him $2.3 million in exchange for dropping the lawsuit. He rejected the settlement offer. He also produced prison visitation records showing Combs’s name.
On September 9, Combs failed to show up to a virtual hearing on the case. As a result, Lenawee County Circuit Court Judge Anna Marie Anzalone awarded Cardello-Smith a $100 million default judgment, to be paid in $10 million installments beginning in October. But on September 18, Anzalone set aside the judgement after Combs’s legal team successfully argued that Cardello-Smith did not serve the lawsuit in accordance with Michigan law. And because Cardello-Smith’s allegations date back to 1997 and are well outside the statute of limitations, the lawsuit is expected to be dismissed.
Dawn Richard, a former member of the group Danity Kane, filed a federal lawsuit against Combs on September 10, accusing him of sexual battery, harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and unlawful imprisonment. In her complaint, Richard painted the picture of Combs as an explosive boss who manipulated her over the course of a decade, making her believe that “abuse and exploitation were required for female artists to succeed in the music industry.”
She accused Combs of groping her and retaliating against her when she denied his advances. Richard also claims she witnessed the producer abusing Cassie on multiple occasions. Combs’s lawyer Erica Wolff has denied the allegations. In a statement to Variety, she accused Richard of manufacturing “a series of false claims all in the hopes of trying to get a pay day.”
One lawsuit claims Combs groomed his accuser “to pass him off to his friends” and traded on his celebrity connections.
In his suit, Jones says that he feared Combs was grooming him and “that fear became a reality” when actor Cuba Gooding Jr. allegedly assaulted him during an outing on the music mogul’s yacht. An amended version of the lawsuit filed in late March names Gooding as a defendant, People reported.
The lawsuit also says that Combs’s circle enabled his behavior in order to have access to celebrities that he knew and socialized with. “Mr. Combs was known for throwing the ‘best’ parties,” the suit reads. “Affiliation with, and or sponsorship of Mr. Combs sex-trafficking parties garnered legitimacy and access to celebrities such as famous athletes, political figures, artist[s], musicians, and international dignitaries like British Royal, Prince Harry.” (The complaint does not include any allegations of wrongdoing against Prince Harry.)
Homeland Security raided Combs’s properties, reportedly as part of a sex-trafficking investigation.
On March 25, federal agents raided the music mogul’s residences in Los Angeles and Miami. NBC News reported that the search warrants are connected to a federal investigation into allegations of sex trafficking, sexual assault, and the solicitation and distribution of illegal narcotics and firearms. Federal agents in New York have also spoken with at least four Jane Does and one John Doe as part of the investigation, with more interviews to come, Rolling Stone reports.
In a statement, Combs’s attorney Aaron Dyer said there was “a gross overuse of military-level force” during the execution of the search warrants. “Mr. Combs was never detained but spoke to and cooperated with authorities. Despite media speculation, neither Mr. Combs nor any of his family members have been arrested nor has their ability to travel been restricted in any way,” he said.
While authorities have not said whether Combs is a subject of the alleged sex-trafficking investigation, Dyer connected the raids to the lawsuits against the rapper. “This unprecedented ambush — paired with an advanced, coordinated media presence — leads to a premature rush to judgment of Mr. Combs and is nothing more than a witch hunt based on meritless accusations made in civil lawsuits,” he said in the statement.
In an Instagram post, Misa Hylton — Combs’s former partner and mother of his son Justin — shared video footage of Justin and Christian Combs being detained during the raid and denounced the agents’ “excessive use of force.” She added that an attorney is looking into the agents’ conduct.
One of Combs’s associates, who was described in Jones’s lawsuit as “Mr. Combs’s mule,” was arrested on the same day at Miami’s Opa-Locka airport when law enforcement searched a plane linked to the music mogul. Brendon Paul was charged with one count of possession of suspected cocaine and another of possession of “suspected marijuana candy,” according to an affidavit obtained by TMZ. The arrest was not related to the raids, the outlet reports.
In September, Combs listed his Los Angeles property for $61.5 million, People reports.
Combs is now facing charges of racketeering and sex trafficking.
Federal agents arrested Combs at the Park Hyatt New York in Manhattan on September 16 after a grand jury indicted him. In a sweeping 14-page indictment, he was charged with sex trafficking and racketeering. It alleges Combs “abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct.” To do so, the complaint continues, the rapper “relied on the employees, resources, and influence of the multi-faceted business empire that he led and controlled — creating a criminal enterprise whose members and associates engaged in, and attempted to engage in, among other crimes, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice.”
Combs’s lawyer Marc Agnifilo responded to the arrest in a statement to Vulture. “He is an imperfect person but he is not a criminal. To his credit, Mr. Combs has been nothing but cooperative with this investigation and he voluntarily relocated to New York last week in anticipation of these charges,” Agnifilo said. “Please reserve your judgment until you have all the facts. These are the acts of an innocent man with nothing to hide, and he looks forward to clearing his name in court.”
During his first court appearance on September 17, Combs pleaded not guilty to the charges. His attorneys argued that he should be released on a $50 million bond and put on home arrest with electronic monitoring. But prosecutors said he should not be released since “the risk of danger” he presents toward his alleged victims “is acute.” Judge Robyn Tarnofsky agreed and ruled that the rapper be held without bail until his trial.
Combs’s legal team appealed the decision on September 18, asking District Court Judge Andrew L. Carter to release him. His attorneys offered a new bail package that included a $50 million bond, surrendering Combs’s passport, weekly drug testing, and restricting female visitors to his home “except for family, property caretakers, and friends who are not considered to be co-conspirators.” However, Carter ruled that Combs should stay in custody, saying prosecutors showed “clear and convincing evidence that there is no condition or set of conditions” that would ensure the safety of witnesses.
Several brands and organizations have cut ties with Combs.
In late November, Diddy temporarily stepped down as chairman of Revolt, the media company he founded in 2013. In June, Diddy sold his majority stake in the company for an undisclosed amount. Capital Prep Harlem, a charter school he opened in 2016, also announced it would end its partnership with the music mogul.
After the footage of Combs assaulting Cassie was made public, New York City mayor Eric Adams said his team was considering rescinding the key to New York City that Combs received last September for “his contributions to music, business, and philanthropy.” In the wake of the footage, Howard University’s board of trustees also voted to revoke an honorary degree that was awarded to Diddy in 2014.
At least 18 companies that were partnering with Diddy’s e-commerce website Empower Global have dropped the platform, according to Rolling Stone. Meanwhile, Variety reports that a new reality show featuring Combs, which was in the early stages of development at Hulu, has also been scrapped following the allegations. The show, tentatively titled Diddy+7, would have followed Combs and his family. And Salxco, which managed Diddy as an artist, no longer lists him as a client on its website, Bloomberg reports.
Several reports have outlined additional allegations of abusive behavior.
In late May, Rolling Stone published a wide-ranging story detailing various accusations against Combs, including a new allegation from a woman who worked with Bad Boy’s marketing team as a freelance graphic designer in the early aughts. The woman said that in 2001, Combs threw a party at the Peninsula Hotel to celebrate being acquitted for a nightclub shooting in which three people were injured. She alleged that during the party, Combs approached her and began massaging her back. “I’m getting touched on my shoulder, my arms, my back. He’s like, ‘Oh yeah, you like that? I know you like that.’ Like really, really gross,” Anna told Rolling Stone. She said that weeks after the party, her boss’s girlfriend told her Combs had approached the boss at the party in an attempt to “solicit me for sex.”
Rolling Stone also spoke with students who encountered Combs at Howard University in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Although Combs left the university after his sophomore year, he maintained close ties on campus. A former student described the rapper regularly showing up and tapping on the window of a girlfriend’s class to get her to ditch. A classmate of the girlfriend claimed that over time she seemed to “tense up” when Combs appeared. “He just had a weird control thing. I felt like she was fearful,” the former classmate said. This person also recalled a disturbing incident when Combs appeared outside the girlfriend’s dorm and “screamed and hollered and acted a stone fool until she came downstairs.” The former classmate alleged that when the girlfriend came downstairs, Combs proceeded to beat her with what appeared to be a belt. The witness said Combs “whupped her butt — like really whupped her butt,” adding that the woman “was trying to defend herself a little bit. She was crying. And we were telling him, ‘Get off of her.’ We were screaming for her.”
In another jarring incident from the rapper’s past, he is accused of attacking late music executive Shakir Stewart. After Porter and Combs broke up, she began dating Stewart, attending L.A. Reid’s wedding in Italy with him. After the ceremony, Combs went to Stewart’s hotel room and broke a chair over Stewart’s head, according to Stewart’s mother and two of his close friends.
Rolling Stone also revisited a 2017 lawsuit by Combs’s former personal chef Cindy Rueda. She alleged that while working for Combs from 2015 to 2016, he “regularly” made her serve meals while he and his guests “were engaged” in “sexual activity.” Rueda claimed that after asking her to make a “postcoital meal,” Combs greeted her fully naked and asked if “she liked his naked body.” She also accused Combs of having her bring breakfast to his room and then proceeding to engage in sexual activity with model Gina Huynh. The suit was forced into arbitration and ended privately. Meanwhile, in 2019, Huynh told gossip blogger Tasha K that Combs had offered her $50,000 to terminate a pregnancy in 2014. She accused Combs of pushing her to the ground and dragging her by her hair in 2018 and said he once “stomped” on her stomach in a jealous rage. The allegations went largely ignored, and Huynh didn’t speak to Rolling Stone.
In June, five former employees who worked at Sean John and Blue Flame — Combs’s former lifestyle brand and defunct advertising agency, respectively — spoke with the Daily Beast about how the mogul’s alleged abusive behavior extended to the workplace.
One of the workers said that during a disagreement with Combs, he berated her and aggressively grabbed her face. “He puts one hand on both sides of my cheeks and says ‘Stick out your tongue,’ and then he squeezes my face harder and yells at me to stick out my tongue, forces his hands on my face,” the woman said, adding that Combs wanted to check whether her tongue was bleeding because she had been biting it.
Another claimed that women specifically bore the brunt of Combs’s alleged toxic behavior. “There was a lot of cursing, a lot of talking to people crazy, a lot of [calling women] bitches, [saying], ‘Fuck you,’ or ‘Stupid,’” or “‘I’ll fire y’all bitches right now,’” the former employee told the Beast. However, she added, she rarely saw him “be like that with men” except in instances where they had no “power or stature in the industry.”
We have reached out to a representative for Combs about the latest allegations and will update when we hear back.
This story has been updated.
