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By Luc Cohen and Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Sean 'Diddy' Combs was hit with an expanded federal indictment on Friday, charging the hip-hop mogul with five criminal counts including racketeering and sex trafficking.
Combs, 55, previously pleaded not guilty to an earlier three-count indictment.
The new indictment includes additional charges of sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution, and could subject Combs to more time in prison if convicted. Both indictments refer to three of Combs' alleged victims.
Combs' trial remains scheduled for May 5 in Manhattan federal court. Prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian to arraign Combs on the new indictment on April 25.
In a statement provided by Combs' media representatives, his lawyers said: "These are not new allegations or new accusers. These are the same individuals, former long-term girlfriends, who were involved in consensual relationships. This was their private sex life, defined by consent, not coercion.”
Prosecutors said Combs used his business empire to sexually abuse women between 2004 and 2024.
The alleged abuse included having women take part in recorded sexual performances called "freak offs" with male sex workers, who were sometimes transported across state lines.
Combs' legal team has forcefully denied that he did anything wrong.
Marc Agnifilo, one of Combs' lawyers, has said Combs never forced anyone to engage in sexual acts against their will, and that the freak offs were consensual sexual activity.
Combs has been jailed in Brooklyn since September. He also faces dozens of civil lawsuits by women and men who accused him of sexual abuse.
NEW COUNTS
The earlier indictment charged Combs with a single count of transportation to engage in prostitution with three alleged victims. That could have led jurors to acquit on that count if they doubted Combs' guilt as to any of those victims.
Combs now faces separate counts of transportation to engage in prostitution with two women, referred to as Victim-1 and Victim-2. The new indictment refers to a third woman, Victim-3, as a victim of Combs' alleged racketeering conspiracy.
Also known during his career as Puff Daddy and P. Diddy, Combs founded Bad Boy Records and is credited with helping turn rappers and R&B singers such as Mary J. Blige, Faith Evans, Notorious B.I.G. and Usher into stars in the 1990s and 2000s.
But prosecutors have said his success concealed a dark side, citing incidents including in March 2016 when Combs was captured on a surveillance video kicking, dragging, and throwing a vase at a woman trying to leave a Los Angeles hotel.
CNN last year broadcast a surveillance video showing Combs striking and dragging his former girlfriend Casandra Ventura, an R&B singer known as Cassie.
Combs apologized following the broadcast. Agnifilo has said the video was not evidence of sex trafficking, and that Combs and Ventura had "a toxic, loving 11-year relationship."
(Reporting by Luc Cohen and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Rod Nickel, Marguerita Choy and Nia Williams)
