A timeline of the sexual misconduct allegations against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs as he awaits trial

Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith, who was incarcerated in a Michigan prison after criminal sexual misconduct and kidnapping, sued Combs on June 6th in Lenawee County Circuit Court in Michigan.

The Detroit Metro Times reported in September that Cardello-Smith accused the rapper of drugging and sexually assaulting him at a party in Detroit in 1997. At the time of the alleged assault, Cardello-Smith was a restaurant and hospitality industry employee, the Detroit Metro Times said.

Combs filed a new motion in Jones’ lawsuit against him, requesting the court to dismiss the case.

The motion said that Jones failed to provide enough evidence for multiple allegations.

“Jones’ Second Amended Complaint is his third attempt to dress up a run-of-the-mill commercial disagreement as a salacious RICO conspiracy,” the motion reads. “Replete with legally meaningless allegations and blatant falsehoods, the SAC’s true purpose is to generate media hype and exploit it to extract a settlement.”

The motion also alleged that Jones posted a video on X in which he and rapper Uncle Murda joked about the lawsuit. The video no longer exists on Jones’ X page, but the motion provides a link to another account that has reshared it.

According to the account @ArtOfDialogue, the video was taken at 50 Cent’s Humor & Harmony weekend festival, which took place between August 7 to 11.

On August 26, Combs’ lawyer Erica Wolff told Business Insider in a statement via email: “Mr. Jones’s lawsuit is pure fiction — a shameless attempt to create media hype and extract a quick settlement. There was no RICO conspiracy and Mr. Jones was not threatened, groomed, assaulted, or trafficked. We look forward to proving — in a court of law — that all of Mr. Jones’s claims are made-up and must be dismissed.”

Blackburn, Jones’ attorney, responded to Combs’ motion in a statement to Business Insider via email on August 28.

“Rodney Jones filed an affidavit under penalty of perjury to the truth of the matter asserted in the filing,” Blackburn wrote. “Can Sean Combs do the same?! Sean Combs is a proven liar. He said Cassie was lying, and then, out of the blue, a video popped up of him beating her in the hallway. At the end of the day, Sean Combs word is as reliable as quicksand.”

A day later, Combs was hit with another lawsuit.

Dawn Richard, a former member of the R&B girl group Danity Kane, which was formed by Combs in 2005, accused the rapper of assault, sexual assault and harassment, sexual battery, and false imprisonment.

In her lawsuit, filed in New York’s Southern District court, Richard alleged multiple instances in which the rapper groped her and verbally abused her while Danity Kane was signed to Combs’ label, Bad Boy Records.

Richard said the harassment continued when she joined Diddy in Dirty Money, a musical trio formed in 2009 featuring Richard, Combs, and singer Kalenna Harper.

Richard also claimed she saw Combs choke and punch Ventura, whom Combs was dating at the time, on multiple occasions.

On Monday, People reported that Harper responded to the lawsuit on her Instagram Story on September 13.

In one of the Story posts, Harper wrote: “It’s important to understand that while I was present in some of the same professional settings mentioned, many of the allegations and incidents described in this suit are not representative of my experiences, and some do not align with my own truth.”

Harper denied that she and Tony Vick, her husband, were involved in or aware of any abusive or unlawful behavior. In the lawsuit, Richard claimed Harper witnessed Combs abusing Ventura and was also yelled at by Combs. Richard also said Harper once confided in her that Vick was abusive to her.

In an emailed statement to Business Insider on September 17, Combs’ attorney Wolff denied the allegations.

“Mr. Combs is shocked and disappointed by this lawsuit,” Wolff said. “In an attempt to rewrite history, Dawn Richard has now manufactured a series of false claims all in the hopes of trying to get a pay day — conveniently timed to coincide with her album release and press tour.”

“If Ms. Richard had such a negative experience with ‘Making the Band’ and Danity Kane, she would not have chosen to continue working directly with Mr. Combs for Dirty Money, nor would she have returned for the ‘Making the Band’ reboot in 2020 or agreed to be featured on ‘The Love Album’ last year.”

Wolff added: “It’s unfortunate that Ms. Richard has cast their 20-year friendship aside to try and get money from him, but Mr. Combs is confidently standing on truth and looks forward to proving that in court.”

On September 17, Combs pleaded not guilty to all three charges in his first hearing in Manhattan federal court.

To keep Combs out of jail until the trial, his lawyer, Agnifilo, proposed a $50 million bond package and said the rapper planned to sell his private jet.

Prosecutors said Combs was a flight risk due to his wealth and could engage in witness tampering. Per a previous Business Insider report, assistant US Attorney Emily Anne Johnson said in the hearing that Combs and his associates had contacted witnesses in the investigation and tried to get them to change their stories.

Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky denied the bail and ordered Combs to remain in jail until his trial. Deadline reported that Agnifilo said they would appeal Tarnofsky’s decision. The bail hearing was set for the next day.

About a week after Combs was arrested, yet another woman came forward and accused him of sexual assault.

In a complaint, Thalia Graves’ lawyer, Gloria Allred, alleges that Combs and his bodyguard at the time, Joseph Sherman, raped her in 2001. Last year, Graves learned that the rape had been recorded and shown to multiple people, the complaint says.

At the time of the alleged rape, Graves was dating someone who worked for Combs’ record label Bad Boy. Combs reached out to Graves, saying he wanted to discuss her boyfriend’s career, and with Sherman, picked her up at her mother’s home, offered her a glass of wine — which the lawsuit suggests was drugged — and brought her to Bad Boy studios, the complaint says.

In the lawsuit, Graves says she felt “woozy and sedated” and lost consciousness; when she woke up, she was tied up and then violently raped by both Combs and Sherman, the complaint says.

After the assault and in the years since, both Combs and Sherman reached out and threatened her to ensure her silence, the complaint says. Then, in November 2023, following Ventura’s lawsuit, Graves’ ex-boyfriend reached out and told her that Combs and Sherman had recorded and published a video of the attack, the lawsuit says, adding that he may have sold the video as pornography, too.

Combs’ lawyer and Sherman did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

During a press conference on October 1, attorney Tony Buzbee said his firm and another called the AVA Law Group had received allegations against Combs by “more than 3,285 individuals.”

“After vetting we now represent 120 individuals who intend to bring civil claims in civil court against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs as well as claims against many other individuals and entities that we will name as defendants as we file these individual cases,” Buzbee said.

Buzbee said the 120 individuals are from more than 25 states — with the majority living in California, New York, Georgia, and Florida — and their lawsuits would be filed individually in the next 30 days at different courts across the US. He added that the alleged incidents took place between 1991 to 2024, with the majority after 2015.

Buzbee said: “The claims we intend to bring will include the following: violent sexual assault or rape, sexual abuse, facilitated sex with a controlled substance, false imprisonment, compelling prostitution, sexual misconduct, dissemination of video recordings, and sexual abuse of minors.”

Buzbee said half of the group are men, half women, and 25 were minors at the time of the alleged assaults.

“Our youngest victim at the time of the occurrence was nine years old. We have an individual who was 14 years old. We have one who was 15,” Buzbee said.

Buzbee said that the legal teams started speaking to individuals in the months leading up to Combs’ indictment in September the indictment itself encouraged more individuals to come forward.

He added that 55% of the individuals filed reports to the authorities or a hospital, and some had spoken to the FBI.

“You should know to the extent the clients feel comfortable, we also intend to make these individuals available to the authorities specifically to the FBI,” Buzbee said.

Wolff, an attorney for Combs, told BI via email on October 2 that Combs “emphatically and categorically denies as false and defamatory any claim that he sexually abused anyone, including minors.”

“As Mr. Combs’ legal team has emphasized, he cannot address every meritless allegation in what has become a reckless media circus,” Wolff said. “He looks forward to proving his innocence and vindicating himself in court, where the truth will be established based on evidence, not speculation.”

Correction: May 24, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated the date that Cassie Ventura spoke out. It was May 23, 2024, not May 23, 2023