Agents from the Department of Homeland of Security raided Sean Combs’s homes in Los Angeles and Miami on Monday as part of an ongoing investigation into the rap mogul better known as Diddy. The surprise raid comes after lawsuits filed in recent months by his former producer Rodney Jones and longtime girlfriend Cassie, among others; they allege that Combs engaged in a pattern of of sexual assault and trafficking dating back to the early 1990s. As information emerges on the federal criminal investigation, below is everything we know about Combs’s legal situation.
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Why did Homeland Security raid Diddy’s mansions?
Agents with a subdepartment called Homeland Security Investigations were in charge of the raid on Monday on Combs’s mansion in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles and and his two homes in Miami. According to a statement, DHS said that its agents “executed law enforcement actions as part of an ongoing investigation” with assistance from local law enforcement.
Little is known about the inquiry itself, though the New York Times reports that it is being led by federal prosecutors in Manhattan along with agents from Homeland Security Investigations — a branch that probes “illegal cross-border movement of people, goods, money, technology and other contraband throughout the United States,” according to the federal agency’s website. NBC Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Times report that the inquiry is related to sex trafficking, another area handled by HSI.
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What happened during the raids?
The raids of Diddy’s homes occurred simultaneously on Monday, March 25.
It was evening in Miami when federal agents entered Combs’s mansion on Star Island — a man-made island in the Biscayne Bay that is the richest neighborhood in the United States. The local NBC channel reports that agents walked out of the home with bankers’ boxes and laptops and that phones were also seized.
Combs’s Los Angeles home, worth around $40 million, was raided at the same time, which was in the afternoon on the West Coast. Two of his sons were detained outside the home while agents, with their guns drawn, searched inside.
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Where was Diddy during the raids?
NBC News in Miami reports that Combs was scheduled to depart for a trip to the Bahamas at the time of the raid. While it appears he was not at any of his homes when federal agents came knocking, he was seen by TMZ at the Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport around 6 p.m. TMZ reports that Diddy was walking outside a Customs office at the airport used by private planes in south Florida.
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What happened with Diddy’s plane?
Airplane trackers report that Combs’s private jet — a Gulfstream 5 registered as LoveAir LLC — took off from Palm Springs, California at 7:30 p.m. PT on Monday. It then landed around 30 minutes later at Van Nuys Airport in the Los Angeles area, then took off again at 9 p.m. local time and touched down early Tuesday in Antigua.
Since Combs was seen in Florida at the Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport around 6 p.m. ET, he could not have been on this flight.
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The allegations against Diddy
While rumors about Combs’s alleged misdeeds have circulated for years, many in the public became aware of the story only in November when the singer Cassie — Combs’s former girlfriend, whose real name is Cassandra Ventura — filed a federal lawsuit against him. She accused Combs of being physically abusive, raping her, and forcing her to have sex with other men. The lawsuit was settled out of court one day after it was filed.
In the months since, three more woman and one man have sued Combs, alleging rape, sexual harassment, and sex trafficking. In one of the lawsuits, producer Rodney Jones alleges that Combs and his staff were involved in sex trafficking in Florida, New York, California, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Dmitry Gorin, a former Los Angeles County sex crimes prosecutor, told the Los Angeles Times that the allegations in the civil lawsuits would have been enough for a judge to grant a search warrant for Combs’s houses. Gorin said that law enforcement would be searching “for videos or photographs on any devices connected to the target … anywhere where digital images can be found in connection to sexual conduct that would have been recorded.”
