Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ indictment alleges he used power to build empire of sexual crime

By Larry Neumeister, Michael R. Sisak, Jennifer Peltz and Andrew
Dalton

For 10 months, rumblings, lawsuits, law enforcement raids and mounting allegations of widespread sexual abuse had surrounded Sean “Diddy Combs. The business empire, cultural cachet and fatherly image he had cultivated in the decades since he became a hot young hip-hop mogul in the 1990s had begun to erode.

On Tuesday, those ripples became a wave with the unsealing of a sweeping indictment alleging years of sex trafficking and conspiracy, to which he pleaded not guilty before a federal magistrate ordered him jailed without bail as he awaits trial.

The indictment accuses Combs of presiding over a sordid empire of sexual crimes that used his “power and prestige” for “sex trafficking, forced labor, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, drug offenses, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.”

It describes the inducement of female victims and male sex workers into drugged-up, elaborately produced sexual performances dubbed “Freak Offs”