Federal brokers raided properties in Los Angeles and Miami on Monday which can be linked to the hip-hop mogul Sean Combs, an individual with data of the case mentioned.
Homeland Safety Investigations carried out the raids however didn’t present particulars concerning the case, together with whether or not Mr. Combs was a goal or which prison expenses had been being investigated. Mr. Combs, who’s often known as Puff Daddy or Diddy, has been accused of sexual assault and intercourse trafficking in a number of civil lawsuits over the past a number of months.
A spokesperson for Mr. Combs didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The prison inquiry was being performed by federal prosecutors within the Southern District of New York and federal brokers with Homeland Safety, a law-enforcement official mentioned. Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the Southern District, declined to remark.
In an announcement, Homeland Safety mentioned that brokers from New York had “executed regulation enforcement actions as a part of an ongoing investigation, with help from HSI Los Angeles, HSI Miami and our native regulation enforcement companions.”
Video from Fox 11 (KTTV), a neighborhood tv station in Los Angeles, confirmed armed officers getting into a house within the Holmby Hills space of town, which a law-enforcement official mentioned was linked to Mr. Combs. Public information in California additionally point out that the house is owned by an organization led by Mr. Combs.
The raids had been a shocking growth within the profession of Mr. Combs, 54, a producer, label govt and occasional rapper who has been one of the influential and well known figures within the music enterprise over the past 30 years.
He performed an integral function within the transformation of hip-hop into a world business power, crafting hits and larger-than-life personas for rap and R&B performers just like the Infamous B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige. He additionally made smash hits himself with songs like “I’ll Be Lacking You” (1997), a ballad to the Infamous B.I.G. after his killing in a drive-by taking pictures, which featured Religion Evans, the rapper’s widow, and sampled the Police’s hit “Each Breath You Take.”
However Mr. Combs has additionally been dogged for many years by accusations of violence. In November, he was sued for sexual assault by Casandra Ventura, his former girlfriend, who was additionally signed to his label, Dangerous Boy, because the performing artist Cassie.
In her go well with, Ms. Ventura accused Mr. Combs of forcing her to have interaction in sexual exercise with male prostitutes over a interval of years. The go well with mentioned that because of these encounters, which occurred in plenty of cities throughout the USA, Ms. Ventura was a sufferer of intercourse trafficking.
Ms. Ventura’s civil go well with was settled in simply in the future, together with her and Mr. Combs saying their dispute had been resolved “amicably.”
That case, filed in an in depth 35-page criticism, drew headlines world wide and imperiled the enterprise model he had steadily constructed up over a long time. Within the months earlier than Ms. Ventura’s go well with, Mr. Combs was given trade awards and launched his first studio album in 17 years.
Even after its settlement, Ms. Ventura’s go well with was adopted by a number of extra circumstances, every accusing Mr. Combs of sexual assault. In a single case filed final month, a music producer, Rodney Jones, mentioned that Mr. Combs had made undesirable sexual contact with him, and compelled him to rent prostitutes and take part in intercourse acts with them. In current months, lots of Mr. Combs’s enterprise companions have distanced themselves from him.
Federal investigators in New York have been main the investigation, and have been conducting interviews asking potential witnesses about sexual misconduct allegations towards Mr. Combs for a number of months, based on an individual conversant in the interviews.
Mr. Combs has denied the accusations towards him. In December, after an nameless girl filed a go well with accusing Mr. Combs and two different males of raping her in a New York recording studio in 2003, when she was 17, the music mogul mentioned: “Sickening allegations have been made towards me by people on the lookout for a fast payday. Let me be completely clear: I didn’t do any of the terrible issues being alleged.”
After Mr. Jones’s go well with final month, Shawn Holley, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, mentioned Mr. Jones is “nothing greater than a liar who filed a $30 million lawsuit shamelessly on the lookout for an undeserved payday,” and known as his accusations “pure fiction.” Ms. Holley and two different attorneys for Mr. Combs additionally didn’t reply to requests for touch upon Monday.
In an announcement on Monday, Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer who represents Ms. Ventura and the nameless girl who sued Mr. Combs alleging the assault at a New York studio, mentioned: “We’ll all the time help regulation enforcement when it seeks to prosecute people who have violated the regulation. Hopefully, that is the start of a course of that can maintain Mr. Combs chargeable for his wicked conduct.”
The house searched in Miami was on Star Island, an unique enclave of mansions in Biscayne Bay in style with celebrities and the rich. On Monday its standard tranquillity was interrupted by a Homeland Safety Investigations van with flashing red-and-blue lights, regulation enforcement officers in blue windbreakers and at the very least two brokers with canines, in addition to journalists dotting its palm-lined lawns.
An analogous scene performed out close to Mr. Combs’s house in Los Angeles, the place by late afternoon just a few dozen individuals, lots of them journalists, milled concerning the tony neighborhood of Holmby Hills, unable to cross the yellow warning tape strung throughout South Mapleton Drive.
A couple of Los Angeles Law enforcement officials blocked the street main as much as Mr. Combs’s property. These passing took an curiosity, with drivers of luxurious sport utility automobiles slowing right down to take images of the scrum.
The neighborhood, only a mile east of the College of California, Los Angeles, is accustomed to consideration. Boasting a protracted record of movie star residents, it’s the place Hugh Hefner as soon as threw lavish events on the Playboy Mansion and the place Michael Jackson lived in a château simply earlier than his demise. Most estates are surrounded by gates and greenery or vine-covered stone partitions — pillars of privateness for a group recognized for its exclusivity.
Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting from Washington, D.C., Chelsia Rose Marcius from New York, Corina Knoll from Los Angeles and Verónica Zaragovia from Miami.
