NEW YORK (AP) — Federal prosecutors have added two prices to Sean “Diddy” Combs ‘ indictment, increasing on allegations that the jailed hip-hop mogul engaged in intercourse trafficking as not too long ago as final yr.
A superseding indictment filed Friday accuses Combs of utilizing pressure, fraud, or coercion to compel a lady to interact in industrial intercourse acts from at the least 2021 to 2024.
The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Manhattan, additionally alleges Combs was concerned in transporting the lady — recognized solely as Sufferer-2 — and different folks, together with industrial intercourse employees, to interact in prostitution throughout the identical time-frame.
The brand new prices are along with racketeering conspiracy and intercourse trafficking prices filed towards Combs when he was arrested in September. They enhance the overall variety of prices towards him from three to 5.
Combs, 55, is scheduled to face trial Might 5. He stays locked up at a federal jail in Brooklyn. A message searching for touch upon the brand new prices was left together with his representatives.
Combs denies committing any crimes and has pleaded not responsible to the primary set of prices, which allege that he coerced and abused girls for years with assist from a community of associates and staff whereas silencing victims via blackmail and violence, together with kidnapping, arson and bodily beatings.
His arraignment on the brand new prices has not been scheduled.
Federal prosecutors allege the “I’ll Be Missing You” singer and Dangerous Boy Data founder used his “power and prestige” as a music star to induce feminine victims into drugged-up, elaborately produced sexual performances with male intercourse employees in occasions dubbed “Freak Offs.”
Central to the case is a March 2016 video displaying Combs hitting and kicking his then-girlfriend, R&B singer Cassie, in a Los Angeles lodge hallway. Prosecutors contend the assault occurred throughout a “Freak Off.” Combs lawyers argue the footage was nothing more than a “glimpse into a complex but decade-long consensual relationship” between the 2.
Combs’ attorneys contend the case ought to by no means have been introduced and are preventing to dismiss a cost involving allegations he transported a male escort throughout state traces.
“The government has concocted a criminal case based primarily on allegations that Mr. Combs and two of his longtime girlfriends sometimes brought a third party — a male escort — into their sexual relationship,” Combs lawyer Alexandra A.E. Shapiro wrote in a February courtroom submitting.
“Each of the three charges in the case are premised on the theory that this type of sexual activity is a federal crime,” Shapiro added.
Friday’s superseding indictment is the second filed in Combs’ case.
Within the first, in January, federal prosecutors disclosed that their case concerned at the least three girls whom they stated Combs compelled to interact in industrial intercourse acts. In alternate, prosecutors stated, he offered them with cash, profession alternatives and fee of lease and housing bills.
