Federal law enforcement reportedly descended on two properties owned by Sean “Diddy” Combs on Monday afternoon in connection with a sex trafficking investigation.
The coordinated raids were conducted in Los Angeles and Miami by armed Department of Homeland Security agents, with local law enforcement assisting, sources with knowledge of the matter told TMZ.
A spokesperson for the department confirmed the raids in a statement to The Daily Beast.
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“Earlier today, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) New York executed law enforcement actions as part of an ongoing investigation, with assistance from HSI Los Angeles, HSI Miami, and our local law enforcement partners,” they said. “We will provide further information as it becomes available.”
A local Los Angeles station, FOX11, aired overhead footage of the Los Angeles raid showing what appeared to be two of the rappers’ sons, Justin Combs and King Combs, outside the home in handcuffs.
The execution of the search warrants, out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, is believed to be tied to the allegations that have mounted against the 54-year-old Combs in recent months.
Los Angeles outlet KNBC reported that three Jane Does and one John Doe had been interviewed by prosecutors, with their investigation concerning “sex trafficking, sexual assault, [and] the solicitation and distribution of illegal narcotics and firearms.”
At least three other Jane Doe interviews are scheduled, a source told the station.
The first lawsuit to hit Combs was filed in November by the R&B singer Cassie Ventura, who accused him of subjecting her to sexual and physical abuse over the course of their years-long romantic relationship.
Combs and Ventura privately settled her complaint a day after it was filed. A week later, however, two more women came forward with their own allegations of abuse.
One of them, Liza Gardner, said she was 16 years old when Combs and another musician took turns raping her and her friend in 1990. The rapper denied wrongdoing through a representative, who called both of the new lawsuits “a money grab.”
In December, a fourth woman accused Combs of sexual assault, alleging that he, the former longtime president of his record label, and another man gang-raped her in 2003, when she was 17 years old.
“Enough is enough,” Combs said in a statement released shortly after. “For the last couple of weeks, I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy.” He denied the “sickening allegations” against him and said he would fight to clear his name.
“We will always support law enforcement when it seeks to prosecute those that have violated the law,” Douglas Wigdor, an attorney representing Ventura and the fourth accuser, told The Daily Beast on Monday. “Hopefully, this is the beginning of a process that will hold Mr. Combs responsible for his depraved conduct.”
Monday’s action comes almost exactly a month after a former producer for Combs, Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones, sued him for sexually harassing, drugging, and threatening him as they worked on the mogul’s 2023 project The Love Album: Off the Grid together.
In response, Combs’ lawyer slammed Jones as “nothing more than a liar who filed a $30 million lawsuit shamelessly looking for an undeserved payday.”
On Saturday, the music outlet AllHipHop reported that Jones had alerted a judge to alleged retributive behavior by Combs, who he said had begun “dispatching his agents to harass [Jones’] 8-year-old daughter, the mother of his child, and ex-spouses.”
Jones also claimed that Combs was planting false stories about him with TMZ.
A representative for Combs did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday.
Read it at TMZ
