Hip-hop mogul Sean Diddy Combs (54), who was arrested by federal investigators on charges of prostitution, will stand trial while in custody. According to the Associated Press and other news agencies on the 17th, Combs, who was arrested by the Department of Homeland Security Investigations at a hotel in Manhattan, New York the previous afternoon, appeared at the Manhattan Federal District Court on this day. Combs, who spent a day in custody, denied the charges and applied for bail.
Combs’s side proposed that the court hold him on $50 million bail and that he be held in home detention at his Miami residence. However, the motion was denied. Judge Robin Tarnowski said she was concerned that Combs’s charges “are the type of crimes that can be committed behind closed doors and away from outside supervision,” and that “there are no conditions that would guarantee that he will appear in court upon his release.” She also ordered that he “remain in custody while the case is pending.”
According to the indictment released that day, Combs is accused of using his fame to coerce women into engaging in sexual misconduct as part of a prostitution and criminal organization scheme, and of using his businesses to coerce women and men into performing sexual acts. Prosecutors also said that Combs operated a criminal organization to exploit women for at least 16 years.
Damien Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Manhattan District of New York, explained that Combs “led a criminal organization that committed kidnapping, extortion, and sex trafficking,” and that he “used the business empire he controlled to engage in criminal acts including sex trafficking, kidnapping, and arson.” Combs is the most high-profile music figure to be charged with a sex crime, following R&B singer R. Kelly, who was sentenced to a total of 31 years in prison in 2021 and 2022, the Associated Press and other news agencies reported. If convicted of conspiracy to commit racketeering and sex trafficking, he could face a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and up to life in prison, Reuters reported.
Combs was previously sued by Joy Dickerson-Neal, a woman who had previously appeared in his music videos, for sexual assault, and by Rodney Jones, a producer who worked with him, for coercing him into prostitution.
In May, he was also embroiled in controversy after footage surfaced of him brutally beating his ex-girlfriend in a hotel hallway in Los Angeles in March 2016.