It could be over for Sean “Diddy” Combs and his seemingly bulletproof, billion-dollar empire.
“He has a very questionable past that he’s been able to control because of his power for a very long time,” Derrick Parker, who was a detective in the NYPD’s rap intelligence unit (aka “Hip Hop Cops”), told The Post. “But it looks to me like someone is behind this — someone who really wants to destroy his brand and take him down.”
Parker was referring to Homeland Security agents swarming Combs’ homes in Los Angeles and Miami Monday in a TV thriller-style surprise raid. The cross-country invasion was reportedly related to sex-trafficking allegations, law enforcement sources told The Post.
Meanwhile, a dazed-looking Combs, 54, was seen at the Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport Monday afternoon after his private jet was stopped by feds on the tarmac — apparently bound for a Caribbean spring break with some of his seven kids.
Around the same time, the entrepreneur’s alleged “drug mule,” Brendan Paul, 25, was arrested on suspicion of cocaine and marijuana possession in Miami.
It all happened almost one day to the month since Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones — a former producer and videographer for Diddy — filed an explosive lawsuit claiming the music mogul repeatedly sexually assaulted him from September 2022 to November 2023.
Jones accused Combs of groping his genitals and grooming him into having sex.
Diddy’s attorney Shawn Holley previously told Page Six that “Lil Rod is nothing more than a liar” who filed the $30 million lawsuit “shamelessly looking for an undeserved payday.”
After news of the raid broke, old videos and interviews resurfaced online — some showing Usher, who was only 13 when he was sent to Diddy’s “Puffy Flavor Camp” at the impresario’s luxe Scarsdale mansion.
Usher, now 45, told Howard Stern in 2016 that he had seen “very curious things taking place” at the “camp” and that he would never send a child of his somewhere like that.
“It was pretty wild. It was crazy. There were very curious things taking place and I didn’t necessarily understand it,” Usher told Stern.
In a 2004 interview with Rolling Stone, Usher recalled how Diddy introduced him to “a totally different set of s–t — sex, specifically.”
Parker, who’s now a private investigator, told The Post that the feds may have an informant from Diddy’s inner circle.
“Someone’s giving them sensitive information. Someone’s cooperating, and it’s probably someone close to him,” said the former detective, who was assigned to two of Diddy’s more infamous cases in New York in the 1990s and knew the rapper well. “This looks, to me, like the tip of the iceberg.”
Both the California and Florida raids were led by the Homeland Security Investigations Human Trafficking Task Force, based on a search warrant issued by the Southern District of New York, sources told The Post.
“This unprecedented ambush … is nothing more than a witch hunt based on meritless accusations made in civil lawsuits,” Combs’s attorney Aaron Dyer said in a statement Tuesday. “There has been no finding of criminal or civil liability with any of these allegations. Mr. Combs is innocent and will continue to fight every single day to clear his name.”
Parker said Diddy’s downfall was all but assured once he settled a bombshell lawsuit — alleging rape and physical abuse — from R&B singer Cassie, his ex-girlfriend, for an undisclosed sum one day after it was filed in November 2023.
Cassie, real name Casandra Ventura, had alleged in the suit that Combs regularly fed her drugs and alcohol, forced her to have sex with male prostitutes and viciously raped and beat her from 2005 to 2018.
She claimed their on-and-off-again relationship, which she once called “a completely inspiring experience,” was brutally sinister below the surface. Combs denied the claims.
“Once Cassie was paid off I knew there’d be a ripple effect,” Parker said. “Like people thinking, ‘Hey she got paid, I’m gonna get paid.’ But he’s got a past a lot of people know about and I think it emboldened a lot of them when they saw what happened with Cassie.”
Indeed, afterward, there were lawsuits from a woman claiming Combs had drugged and sexually assaulted her in 1991, as well as two more similar sexual assault claims from other women. In December, Combs said: “I did not do any of the awful things being alleged.”
A number of longtime rap industry insiders told The Post they were shocked by the scope of Monday’s raids.
“This is a major major play — the feds don’t do this unless they gots something on the man,” said one veteran hip-hop music executive. “Diddy is all about power … But this don’t look good for him. We’re not used to seeing him like this.”
“As a result you won’t see many folks in this business coming out to talk about him,” the exec added. “Not yet, that is.”
Indeed, Combs has played a role in the careers of Usher, Justin Bieber, Mary J. Blige, Faith Evans.
He reigned supreme in the music and fashion industry for decades — seemingly untouchable despite countless sketchy incidents and claims of intimidation, violence and sexual harassment.
A law enforcement source told The Post that the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is carrying out the probe, could be building a case against Combs the way it did with Jeffrey Epstein — by tracking whether he took underage or coerced women across state lines.
“As far as the Brendan Paul arrest goes, they don’t care about him. They just want to flip him,” the law-enforcement source said. “They want him to talk about Diddy. He’s just a piece of the puzzle.”
For years, Combs has largely been able to come out on top despite a history of serious allegations against him.
Deadly beefs, both in New York and with West Coast rappers, ensued — including the fatal shooting of his best friend, rapper Notorious B.I.G. — as Diddy formed Bad Boy Records in the mid-1990s. His reputation grew as both a shrewd hustler and a media- savvy entrepreneur, rolling around Manhattan in Maybachs. He founded the super-successful Sean John clothing line in 1998 and dated Jennifer Lopez from 1999 to 2000 when she was at the peak of her young stardom.
But a very dark streak ran through his rise to the top of a very select club of black billionaire rap moguls.
In April 1999, Combs was busted for allegedly bashing record executive Steve Stoute with a champagne bottle because Stoute used unauthorized footage of Combs in a music video.
The two reconciled after Combs paid Stoute $500,000. Combs, who had faced seven years behind bars, was sentenced to only a day of anger management.
Later that same year, Combs, Lopez and his and his protégé rapper Shyne got into an argument with another patron at Club New York in Times Square and gunfire broke out.
Both Shyne and Combs were arrested and charged in connection with the incident. Combs, whose legal team included O.J. Simpson’s future attorney Johnnie Cochran, skated. Shyne was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
In 2021, an FBI agent who worked the Notorious B.I.G. murder case for two years told The Post that it was Combs, not Biggie, who was the intended hit.
“He’s always seemed to be made of Teflon, he’s usually emerged unscathed from all sorts of situations,” Zack O’Malley Greenburg, author of “3 Kings: Diddy, Dr. Dre, Jay-Z and Hip Hop’s Multi-Billion Rise,” told The Post back in November.
Meanwhile, the accusations piled up.
Singer Aubrey O’Day said in 2022 that she was fired from the girl group Danity Kane, which Combs put together and signed to his Bad Boy Records label, because she “wasn’t willing to do what was expected of [her] — not talent-wise, but in other areas.”
Acquaintance Kimora Lee Simmons once said Combs threatened to hit her while she was pregnant, and his ex-girlfriend Gina Huynh said he had stomped on her stomach and punched her in the head.
Combs has not publicly addressed Huynh’s claims.
Another veteran music industry professional told The Post that Diddy was well-known for showing up late to rehearsals and then refusing to pay the late fees that he incurred.
“He was a real a–hole,” the insider said. “And he always had a lot of young girls around him, teenage girls.”
Combs hasn’t yet commented on Monday’s raids but Justin Combs, one of the rapper’s two sons who were detained at his Holmby Hills estate Monday, spoke out last month after Jones’ lawsuit was filed.
In an amendment to the original filing, Jones claimed that either Diddy or Justin, now 30, shot a man named G at Chalice Recording Studio in Los Angeles in September 2022.
“Justin Combs categorically denies these absurd allegations,” read a statement from Justin Comb’s rep. “They are all lies! This is a a clear example of a desperate person taking desperate measures in hopes of a pay day. There will be legal consequences for ALL defamatory statements made about the Combs family.”
Justin’s mother and Diddy’s one-time girlfriend, Misa Hylton-Brim, went on a rant of her own against the rapper last year after her son was arrested and charged with DUI.
“Everyone has to sit around for years and act like there isn’t anything wrong with you,” she wrote about Diddy. “This is where the buck stops for me.”