Sean Combs trial: Inside Bad Boy empire of threats, violence and bribes

At its peak, Sean “Diddy” Bad Boy Entertainment by Sean “Diddy” was a power of show business, mixing music, video, fashion, alcohol and style in a company that made a billionaire.

Combs praised its visionary growth and brand management.

But federal prosecutors have another description of Bad Boy: a racketeering operation.

The federal trial in New York includes an allegation according to which Combs was involved in the family style racketeering of gang with coercion, kidnapping, threats and blows made to hide a model of sexual assault, sexual traffic and prostitution.

The magnate maintained publicly and with challenge its innocence even before its arrest in September.

The federal accusation act alleges that Combs and its associates attracted women victims, often under the pretension of a romantic relationship. Combs would then have used strength, threats of strength, coercion and controlled substances to bring women to engage in sexual acts with male prostitutes when he occasionally looked in rallies that Combres called “freight”. Combs gave women ketamine, ecstasy and GHB to “keep them obedient and compliant” during performance, according to prosecutors.

The alleged “criminal companies” of Combs have threatened and abused women and used members of their business to engage in sexual traffic, forced labor, interstate transport for prostitution, coercion and security to engage in prostitution, prosecutors, prosecutors, kidnappings, corruption and corruption and corruption, said prosecutors said. By providing so -called Rico accusations, prosecutors in opening declarations said that Combs had been helped by a business, security personnel and aid employees. They would have helped organize freak-offs, then covered the incidents. Until now, Combs is the only one to face criminal charges related to the investigation.

Did the prosecutors argue the case?

What the accusation presented

Prosecutors have so far called nearly 30 witnesses to Manhattan’s position and are expected to finish with witnesses this week.

They include three women who have described graphic sexual assaults, including a woman that the defense recognized was the main witness, the lover of Combs Onetime, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura. It was Ventura’s trial in 2023 that sparked the dispensing of the Combres company with its details on sex, violence and dressings.

His latest former girlfriend, called Jane in court, described how forced efforts and sexual relations continued despite the trial and a raid by internal security investigations to her arrest.

She sent combat pages of the Pursuit of Ventura immediately after her deposit.

“I have been crying for three days and I’m stressed by reading it all. I continue to make nightmares on the forced nights and every time I felt as if I could not say no. I have the impression of reading my own sexual trauma, ”she wrote, according to legal affairs and tests.

On another occasion, she said that she had sent an SMS to her chief of staff about the threats he made, writing: “He just threatened my sexual cassettes that he has of two phones. He said he would expose me and send them to the father of my child. ”

Jane is one of the three women whose testimony is at the center of the trial, the others being Ventura and a former employee testifying under the pseudonym Mia, who also said that she had been sexually assaulted.

Was Bad Boy a criminal business?

Under the law on influenced and corrupt organizations, known as Rico, there are 35 specific offenses, including kidnapping, corruption, corruption and extortion, and federal prosecutors must show a scheme involving at least two manifest acts within the framework of a criminal enterprise.

Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, said that to prove Rico, the accusation must show the existence not only of a criminal activity but of a real criminal enterprise.

People usually think of the crowd, street gangs or drug cartels. But any loose association of two or more is enough, like the entourage of Combs, she said.

They must also show a racketeering diagram or two or more acts of Rico predicate over a period of 10 years.

This is why proof of corruption, kidnapping, obstruction, falsification and prostitution is important for the accusation, she said.

It will be up to the jurors to determine whether the federal prosecutors have proven Rico’s accusation.

The singer of R&B Ventura, who had a long relationship with Combs, was a first key witness in the accusation case.

Ventura testified that she felt “trapped” in a cycle of physical and sexual abuse by him, and that the relationship involved 11 years of alleged blows, sexual blackmail and rape.

She said that Combs had threatened to disclose videos from her sexual meetings with many male workers while the drug was intoxicated and sparkling with baby oil while looking and orchestrated the monsters.

One of these monsters led to a sadly famous fighter hotel, testified Ventura. Video sequences of that night in March 2016 show strikes and Ventura kicks as it stops and tries to protect herself in front of a bank of the hotel. He then dragged her in the corridor by her hooded sweatshirt to their hotel room.

A second angle compared to another camera captures combs throwing a vase towards it. She suffered bruises in her eyes, a big lip and a bruise that the prosecutors showed was always visible during a first in film two days later, where she put on sunglasses and heavy makeup on the red carpet.

According to the prosecutors, concealment then followed. Ventura said the police visited her apartment. She answered some of their questions, but told the jury that she always wanted to protect the combs at the time.

“I would not say who I was talking about,” she told the jury. “At that time, I didn’t want to hurt him this way. There were too many things. It was a lot. “

Eddie Garcia, the security guard of the Intercontinental hotel, testified that Combs had given him a brown paper bag containing $ 100,000 in cash.

Garcia said that after his supervisor had agreed to sell the video recording, he met Combs, the Chief of the Staff of Combs, Kristina Khorram, and a bodyguard. After Garcia has raised concerns about the police, he said that Combs called Ventura on Facetime, gave him the phone and told Ventura to tell Garcia that she also wanted the video “. After that, Garcia said he had taken the money and had divided it with colleagues.

Capricorn Clark, a former combination assistant, recalled a violent incident of 2011 with Combs.

Clark told the jurors that Combs had forced her from his apartment under the threat of a weapon to accompany him at the home of the musician Kid Cudi in December 2011. Once there, Combs and Clark entered the empty house, then Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, presented himself. To avoid having the police involved, Clark testified, Combs ordered him to call Ventura, who was at the time the ex-girlfriend of Combs, and said they had to convince Cudi not to retaliate to the cops. “If you do not convince him, I will kill everything you have me,” quoted Clark Combs.

Cudi testified that his Porsche was then bombed in his aisle with a Molotov cocktail.

Ventura was not the only alleged victim of sex crime in Combs. Mia, an assistant testifying under this name, described years of sexual abuse, rape and threats. Combs, she said, first assaulted her sexually during her 40th birthday party in New York in 2009, shortly after starting to work for him. During the year that followed, she slept in a room at his home, where she was not allowed to lock the door. Through tears, she testified that he had raped her. “I was frozen. I did not react. I was terrified and confused and shameful and frightened. ” Another alleged attack occurred in a chamber cupboard where she said that Combs had caught her head and forced her to give her oral sex.

In counter-examination, she said that she had not initially told federal prosecutors that boats have sexually assaulted her and admitted to having sent loving messages in the years following the alleged attacks.

Jane, her last ex-girlfriend, described how she endured sexual marathons fueled by drugs to the arrest of the Titan Hip-Hop.

Bryana Bongolan, a friend of Ventura, testified that the Combs swung her on a 17 -story balcony and threw her on balcony furniture in September 2016.

“I will never forget that he will stand on this balcony,” she said as a contested defense lawyer the date on which she provided evidence of combs elsewhere in a hotel across the country.