Three men accused Sean “Diddy” Combs of rape and sexual assault in separate lawsuits filed Thursday that allege the rap impresario plied them with doctored drinks and then attacked them while they were unconscious.
The lawsuits, filed anonymously in New York state Supreme Court by lawyer Thomas Giuffra, involve incidents that happened from 2019 to 2022. All allege that Combs raped and sexually assaulted them.
One of the men was a longtime employee of Combs and told NBC News that he was raped in a New York hotel where he met Combs to discuss a “substantial amount of money” he was owed from his off-the-books job.
The man said he worked for Combs between 2006 and 2018 running errands and while they weren’t “buddy, buddy,” he also didn’t expect to be victimized when he met with him in early 2020. But inside the room, the man said Combs served him a drink and in “two minutes, I start to feel like, just very tired, very sleepy.”
When he came to, he said Combs was raping him and when he tried to stop him, he recalled Combs telling him: “I’m almost done.”
“The phrase that just rattles in my brain all the time is ‘I’m almost done,” he said. “Just stop, just stop moving. I’m almost finished. Like, I’m almost done.”
The way Combs went after these men was “very consistent, frighteningly consistent, exactly consistent,” Giuffra told NBC News. “He would hit them with the drinks, knock them out.”
And when they woke up, “he’d be raping them,” the lawyer said.
The new complaints are the latest in a wave of lawsuits filed against Combs in recent months — all with the complainants withholding their names — accusing him of assault and rape under similar circumstances going back to the 1990s. Combs has been behind bars since September when he was arrested by federal agents and accused of engaging in a yearslong scheme to sexually abuse and exploit women.
Prosecutors said Combs, among other things, used his business empire to coerce victims into elaborate, drug-fueled “freak offs” with male sex workers that he arranged, directed and recorded.
Combs, 55, who is being detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, has pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.
His lawyers have said he is innocent of all charges. He has been denied bail three times ahead of his criminal trial, which is scheduled to start in May.
The three men represented by Giuffra are all seeking unspecified damages from Combs and his companies along with a jury trial. They’re also not divulging their real names.
“They’re afraid that one night, somebody affiliated with him, hired by him, could end their life,” Giuffra said.
In addition to Combs, the three lawsuits list as defendants Bad Boy Entertainment Holdings Inc., Bad Boy Entertainment LLC., Bad Boy Productions Holdings, Inc., Daddy’s House Recordings, Inc., and Sony Music Holdings Inc.
“These complaints are full of lies. We will prove them false and seek sanctions against every unethical lawyer who filed fictional claims against him,” Combs’ legal team said in a statement Thursday.
All complainants are identified in the new lawsuits as John Doe, and they all allege that the abuse happened under similar circumstances with Combs preying on the men by luring them, with the help of his associates, to hotel rooms or his private home, plying them with drugged drinks and then sexually assaulting and raping them.
Another complainant said he met Combs at a Manhattan nightclub in 2019 and was “recruited” by Combs’ security guards to join him “and the rest of his entourage at the Park Hyatt hotel for an exclusive afterparty.”
There, he said in the lawsuit, Combs offered him a “cocktail” that he had personally made and then invited him and the other guests into a bedroom.
“Once Plaintiff entered the bedroom, the room ‘started spinning’ and his mouth became very dry,” the man said according to the court papers.
Combs eventually led him to a sofa where he lost consciousness and later awoke to Combs raping him, according to the lawsuit.
The man said in the lawsuit that he tried to resist and, before he blacked out again, remembered seeing “a man and a woman sitting on the bed recording the rape on a camera.”
The next morning he was given $2,500 by the man who filmed the alleged rape and said it was from Combs, according to the lawsuit.
In the third lawsuit, a man alleged that he “fell victim to one or more criminal sex acts” at the hands of Combs “and his associates” from 2020 to 2022.
He said that in the summer of 2020 he was invited by one of Combs’ “associates” at Bad Boy Records to a party at Combs’ mansion in East Hampton, New York.
At the party, he “began feeling ill and subsequently lost consciousness” after having a drink, according to the lawsuit. “Throughout the rest of the night, Plaintiff faded in-and-out of consciousness,” the lawsuit said.
The man said in the lawsuit that Combs and “his associates from Bad Boy Records” took turns sexually assaulting and raping him.
Combs’ legal issues have been mounting since last year when an ex-girlfriend, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, filed an explosive lawsuit accusing him of assault and sex trafficking over the course of their relationship.
Combs denied the accusations but settled with Ventura for an undisclosed amount. Then, several months later, CNN obtained surveillance video from a hotel that showed Combs brutally beating Ventura in 2016. Combs later apologized for his actions.
Multiple other lawsuits have been filed against Combs since then, including one from Dawn Richard, a former member of the girl group Danity Kane. She alleged that Combs groped, assaulted and imprisoned her and threatened her life.
Combs has denied all the claims against him, calling them “sickening allegations” from people looking for “a quick payday.”
