| Back in January, Devin Leonard wrote for Bloomberg Businessweek about the downfall of Diddy Inc., as Sean Combs sought to save his business empire. Devin's back in the newsletter today to write about the fallout of federal charges against Combs. Plus: What if a vaccine can prevent opioid deaths? And what happens when the world's economies stop following the Fed's lead? If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up. We've seen the winking Jeffrey Epstein comparisons on social media, the memes about the thousands of baby oil and lubricant bottles seized from Los Angeles and Miami homes, the gleeful speculation about other A-listers who might have taken part in the infamous "freak offs." The saga of the man known at various times as Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, Diddy and, most recently, the now-unsettling Love, is about to get a lot more serious. Sean Combs was indicted last month in New York on federal charges of racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution, two of which carry the possibility of a life prison sentence. The judge presiding over his case has scheduled a trial for May. There's much we don't know about the extent of Combs' possible misdeeds, but what's been revealed thus far doesn't bode well for the former mogul languishing behind bars in Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center. What's particularly sobering about the case is the businesslike way in which Combs, who's pleaded not guilty, allegedly perpetrated his crimes for more than a decade. Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, says in September's indictment that Combs' private sector empire wasn't devoted just to churning out hit records, running a cable TV network, designing trendy clothes and promoting liquor brands, but also to fulfilling his sexual desires through "the exploitation of women and commercial sex workers" and doing whatever was necessary to keep it all secret. Along with dutifully procuring Combs' purported female victims, his employees, according to the indictment, operated what sounds like a sophisticated in-house travel and personal services agency, booking hotel rooms, ensuring they were supplied with whatever Combs might require for his debaucheries, whether it meant lotions or drugs, and arriving afterward to clean the premises and, if necessary, offer bribes to silence potential witnesses. That is, unless Combs took matters in his own hands, as we saw earlier this year when CNN released a grainy surveillance video of the rapper-producer kicking and beating his former girlfriend and Bad Boy protégé Cassie Ventura in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel in 2016. (Combs subsequently apologized for that.)  Combs at an event in 2021. Photographer: Paras Griffin/Getty Images North America Federal prosecutors told US District Judge Arun Subramanian last week that they'd need at least three weeks to present their case, suggesting they have a parade of cooperating witnesses ready to testify against Combs. Combs' employees apparently kept extensive records of what were, until recently, his clandestine activities—the prosecution team has indicated in court documents that they have such paperwork, to say nothing of videos of Combs' alleged victims engaging in coerced acts with sex workers. The videos could be especially damaging to Combs. "If, as the government claims, Mr. Combs had a propensity for recording many of these incidents for his enjoyment or entertainment purposes down the road, then there's going to be a lot of damning and scary evidence to which a jury will likely react viscerally," says former federal prosecutor Priya Sobori, a partner at the law firm Greenberg Glusker. That Subramanian has already deemed Combs unworthy of bail doesn't seem promising for him either. Typically, lawyers say, celebrities aren't subjected to pretrial imprisonment, because they're too well known to simply vanish. "You're one of the most famous men in the world," says former federal prosecutor Cathy Fleming, a principal at Offit Kurman. "If you flee, where are you going to live? Cuba? So I didn't see him as a flight risk." However, in a letter seeking detention, Williams detailed how Combs, never one to be bashful in business, contacted some of his alleged victims, trying to convince them that they had been willing participants in his acts and reached out to other potential witnesses before they testified at a grand jury hearing. Nor did Williams neglect to mention the hip-hop mogul's alleged propensity for violence, highlighting how one of his accomplices once torched someone's vehicle by "slicing open the car's convertible top and dropping a Molotov cocktail inside." This would seem to be a reference to an incident involving the car of rival producer Kid Cudi, described by Ventura in her November 2023 civil suit against Combs, which rap mogul settled the same month for an undisclosed amount. Civil suits continue to pile up against Combs filed by previously unreported victims, whose allegations his attorneys also deny. Meanwhile, according to Billboard, the family of the late Tupac Shakur has hired a prominent New York attorney to explore the possibility that Combs had role in his murder. (He has disputed this for decades.) Combs was always a bit of joke, a guy who couldn't really dance or rap but had a knack for keeping himself paid and ensuring that he remained famous for being famous. But if convicted in the current case, he's likely to do hard time. "Sex trafficking, you've got a mandatory minimum of 15 years," Fleming says. "And there's no parole in the federal system." Nothing funny there. | 
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