The music mogul has been under mounting scrutiny since a 2023 lawsuit by his former girlfriend, Cassie, accused him of sex trafficking and years of abuse.
Sean Combs, the music mogul whose career has been upended by sexual assault lawsuits and a federal investigation, was arrested in Manhattan on Monday evening, after a grand jury indicted him, according to a person familiar with the indictment who was not authorized to speak publicly.
The charges in the indictment were not immediately clear.
A statement from Mr. Combs’s legal team said they were disappointed with the decision to prosecute him and noted that he had been cooperative with the investigation and had “voluntarily relocated to New York last week in anticipation of these charges.”
“Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is a music icon, self-made entrepreneur, loving family man, and proven philanthropist who has spent the last 30 years building an empire, adoring his children, and working to uplift the Black community,” the statement said. “He is an imperfect person but he is not a criminal.”
Mr. Combs, 54, who is also known as Diddy and Puff Daddy, was a key figure in the global rise of hip-hop as a commercial force in the 1990s and 2000s, helping to make stars of rappers and R&B singers like the Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige. But he has been under intense public scrutiny since a former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, filed a lawsuit last November accusing him of years of sexual and physical abuse.
Mr. Combs settled the suit with Ms. Ventura — an R&B singer known as Cassie, who had been signed to Mr. Combs’s record label — in one day, and denied any wrongdoing. But legal pressure mounted over the next nine months, with the filing of five lawsuits by women alleging sexual assault and three other sexual misconduct suits, all of which Mr. Combs’s lawyers are fighting in court.
In March, federal agents raided Mr. Combs’s homes in Los Angeles and Miami Beach, Fla., stopping him at a Miami-area airport and confiscating his electronic devices. The authorities made no announcements at the time, but a federal official said the inquiry was at least in part a human trafficking investigation. Federal prosecutors in New York had by that time interviewed a number of witnesses about sexual misconduct allegations against Mr. Combs, according to a person familiar with the interviews.
Share
Print
