Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs arrested for human trafficking investigation
NEW YORK– Sean Diddy Combs was arrested Monday in Manhattan, amid on going lawsuits alleging abuse and months after a pair of federal raids that targeted him as the subject of a sex trafficking investigation.
Combs was arrested in the lobby of a new York hotel , according to news sources. He was charged with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion and transportation to engage in prostitution in an indictment unsealed Tuesday.
On March 25, the music mogul’s homes in Los Angeles and Miami were raided in connection to a federal human trafficking investigation.
Combs is arrested in Manhattan after being indicted by a grand jury.
Federal investigators may bring Combs’ accusers to testify before a grand jury soon and most plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits against the rapper have already been interviewed by investigators, sources told CNN—a move that could indicate prosecutors are looking to charge somebody, though no charges have been filed yet.
Plaintiff April Lampros accuses Combs in a lawsuit filed in New York on Thursday of sexual assault over four “terrifying sexual encounters” between 1995 and 2001, including three incidents of rape and one instance of Combs forcing her to take ecstasy.
Former model Crystal McKinney files a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court accusing the rapper of drugging and sexually assaulting her at his New York recording studio in 2003.
Cassie Ventura, Combs’ ex-girlfriend, speaks out after CNN obtained a 2016 video of Combs attacking her in a hotel hallway, stating on Instagram Thursday morning that domestic violence “broke” her and she will “always be recovering” from her past—Combs later apologized fir the video.
In February, producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones sues the rapper in New York in February and alleges he was “subjected to unwanted advances by associates of Diddy at his direction” and was forced to engage in relations with sex workers he hired. In a set of widely covered allegations, Jones says in the lawsuit that Combs regularly hosted “sex-trafficking parties” with underage women and illegal drugs, and implies record label executives who looked the other way financially benefited from access to celebrities and dignitaries like the British royal Prince Harry, who is not accused of any wrongdoing or of attending parties himself (Combs’ attorney tells the Los Angeles Times the suit includes “reckless name-dropping about events that are pure fiction”).
Combs is hit with anorher sexual assault suit in December, accusing the rapper of drugging and participating in a gang rape of the unnamed woman in 2003, when the accuser was 17 years old.
woman named Joie Dickerson-Neal anlleges in a lawsuit a
Combs drugged her, sexually assaulted her and secretly recorded the assault while she was a college student in 1991.
anonymous plaintiff accuses Combs and singer-songwriter Aaron Hall of raping her and a friend in 1990 or 1991 after meeting at an MCA Records event in New York—a suit that, like the Dickerson-Neal complaint, was filed shortly before the expiration of a New York law temporarily allowing lawsuits for older assault allegations that would ordinarily be past the statute of limitations.
Ventura’s $30 million suit is settled the day after it was filed for an undisclosed amount, with Ventura telling.CNN she chose to “resolve this matter amicably,” while Combs’ attorney says the settlement was “in no way an admission of wrongdoing” and didn’t change his denial of the allegations.
Cassie Ventura files the suit against Combs, alleging he raped her in 2018 and subjected her to a years-long abusive relationship that included physical abuse and his assertion of “complete control” over her personal and professional life.