Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs pleads not guilty to revamped sex trafficking indictment, including forced labor allegations

Sean “Diddy” Combs pleaded not guilty to a revised indictment in his sex trafficking and racketeering case Friday, including allegations he threatened employees into working untenable hours through physical and psychological abuse.

Wearing tan prison garb and sporting a newly gray head of hair and beard, Combs, 55, denied the new allegations included in a superseding indictment prosecutors filed in March.

“Not guilty,” Combs said, declining a reading of the revamped indictment.

Combs is set to go on trial in less than a month on a host of charges alleging he participated in sex trafficking, racketeering, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He’s been held at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center federal jail since his September 2024 arrest.

Judge Arun Subramanian said potential jurors will receive questionnaires on Apr. 28, will be questioned in person starting May 5, and pushed back opening arguments to May 12, giving the two sides several weeks to find an impartial panel to weigh the high-profile case.

The feds allege Combs habitually abused women for two decades, including by forcing them to take part in sexual performances, so-called “freak-offs,” with male commercial sex workers. He often drugged victims to keep them “obedient and compliant,” according to charging papers, tracked their whereabouts, monitored their private medical information, and trapped them in his home or hotel rooms. 

They say he lured women into his orbit through promises he’d help them out with money and threatened to revoke his financial assistance if they refused to take part in sex acts with him or male sex workers.

Prosecutors added two new victims in a fleshed-out indictment in January. One filed in March included more details about forced labor Combs allegedly subjected his victims to while running his business empire, including Bad Boy Records.

It says he and members of his enterprise forced employees “to work long hours with little sleep, through use of, among other things, physical force, psychological harm, financial harm, and reputational harm, and/or threats of the same.”

The case alleges anyone who refused Combs’ will risked his violent wrath, detailing instances of arson and multiple acts of kidnapping, including one when he brandished a firearm. 

Combs, who has claimed all sexual encounters he engaged in were consensual, also faces multiple lawsuits containing allegations he sexually abused and assaulted women.

His lawyers declined to comment after Friday’s hearing.