NEW YORK — For 20 years, Sean “Diddy” Combs, the once larger-than-life rap producer and multimillionaire, considered himself untouchable — hiding behind the veil of his celebrity while leading a criminal syndicate that enabled him to control and sexually brutalize women and threaten into silence anyone who crossed him, a federal prosecutor told Manhattan jurors Thursday in closing arguments.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine Slavik said evidence presented over more than seven weeks had proven that in the decades before his September 2024 arrest, Combs wielded his industry status and his massive wealth to behave like a mob boss, employing a network of henchmen who shamed and instilled fear in his victims and those who threatened his power through violence and other intimidation tactics.

“The enterprise’s purpose was to protect its leader,” Slavik said.

The prosecutor said there was no doubt from trial testimony that high-ranking members of Combs’ Bad Boy Records empire, like his bodyguards, habitually committed crimes like kidnapping, arson, drug distribution, sex trafficking, bribery, and obstruction to make sure his every desire was met.

Slavik rattled off names the jury heard throughout the trial — Combs’ “right hand,” Kristina Khorram, or “KK,” and guards like D Roc, Uncle Paulie, Bonds, Rube, and Faheem — from witnesses who described these figures’ constant presence as formidable and critical in maintaining their submission. Slavik said committing crimes together as racketeers made them more of threat.

Accounts jurors heard from Combs’ ex, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, about Combs savagely pummeling her in a Los Angeles hotel lobby, and from the anonymous witness “Jane,” about Combs pressuring her to perform oral sex on a male escort after Combs had beaten her bloody, were chapters out of the same book, Slavik said. She said the three instances of kidnapping jurors heard about were elements of the racketeering scheme, as were instances of staff hiding Combs’ victims in hotel rooms or at his properties while they healed from his beatings.

The prosecutor said weekly marathon sex parties that Combs dubbed “freak-offs,” “wild king nights” or “hotel nights,” which jurors heard extensively about and watched footage of, decisively demonstrated Combs was guilty of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion. Ventura and Jane described the drugged-up and baby oil-saturated sessions as dehumanizing and exhausting and said they could last up to five days straight. Both women said Combs often tasked them with sourcing escorts to have sex with for his gratification and that he blackmailed them by threatening to withhold their rent or publicly release videos of “freak-offs” to keep them compliant.

Slavik said Combs’ claims that the events were consensual and that prosecutors were criminalizing a sexual fetish was disputed by testimony from the women who testified about them.

“Cassie and Jane did not want to have sex with escorts while the defendant watched, masturbated and filmed,” Slavik said.

Pulling up a table of 27 mug shots of male escorts that jurors heard about, the prosecutor said that to convict, the jury didn’t need to determine every “freak-off” entailed sex trafficking, just one.

The cocktails of drugs fed to women to keep them awake for days during the sordid sex parties accounted for “hundreds” of examples of illegal drug distribution as part of the racketeering scheme, Slavik said.

“He fed them drugs for years, and you know he didn’t get those drugs on his own — he used his enterprise to make sure he had a constant supply,” the prosecutor said.

Slavik said powerful evidence made it “absolutely clear” that Combs and his inner circle knew he was breaking the law, like when Khorram allegedly bribed security staff at the Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles to hand over video surveillance of him beating Ventura.

“KK knew that this video had to disappear,” Slavik said. “It could ruin his career.”

Jurors heard that Combs’ team ultimately convinced the hotel staff to provide them with the disturbing footage after they had initially declined a paper bag filled with $100,000 — but that one guard had filmed it on his cell phone. CNN published the video in May 2024, blasting domestic violence allegations against Combs into public view.

Turning to the arson element, Slavik walked jurors through extensive testimony that they heard about Combs and his security guard, Rube, breaking into rapper Kid Cudi’s Hollywood Hills home after Combs learned he had dated Ventura. A former Combs assistant, Capricorn Clark, alleged an armed Combs had kidnapped her in the night to help him hunt down the rapper, whose real name is Scott Mescudi. Ventura testified about Combs threatening to have Mescudi’s car blown up while Combs was out of the country, a threat that materialized weeks after the break-in.

Calling Combs “powerful enough and vicious enough to light another man’s car on fire,” Slavik said the incidents were a “continuation of the extreme measures [he] took to control Cassie,” which she noted was evidenced by Combs backing off as soon as Mescudi agreed to break contact with Ventura.

Combs has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, racketeering conspiracy, transportation to engage in prostitution, and related counts. If found guilty, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

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