An explosive criminal case brought against hip-hop superstar Sean "Diddy" Combs, including sex trafficking and racketeering charges, appears rooted in a civil lawsuit brought against Combs by a Chicago music producer.
Combs and Rodney "Lil Rod" Jones Jr. were long-time business partners, but now are bitter enemies after Jones filed a lawsuit earlier this year that has become one of the guideposts for federal criminal charges brought against Combs on Tuesday .
For the artist known as "Diddy," the criminal case is ditto to the civil suit: similar allegations, the same players, making supercharged claims against the same global entertainment star.
Despite being one of the most recognizable-and richest hip-hop artists in the world, for at least a decade and a half, prosecutors say Combs had a secret, and the intimate details were known only to his inner circle.
There were few insiders closer to Combs than Chicago music producer Rodney Jones, who shook Diddy's world with a federal civil racketeering lawsuit filed this past February, alleging Combs had a habit of regularly drugging staff and guests, brandishing illegal guns, and having forced sex with men and women, including underage girls.
A month after Jones' lawsuit was filed, agents with Homeland Security Investigations conducted raids on Combs' homes in southern California and south Florida.
After a federal criminal indictment was unsealed on Tuesday, including claims dating back to 2008, the civil suit brought by his Chicago producer and several similar lawsuits provided the apparent groundwork for the federal investigation.
"To look at the civil case and to look at the criminal cases is really to see the mirror images of the same charges and the same facts, so much so that the cornerstone of the civil lawsuit is a civil RICO [racketeering] allegation, and the cornerstone of the criminal complaint, of the criminal indictment, is a criminal Rico allegation," said ABC 7 chief legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Gil Soffer.
Attorneys representing Combs have tried to dismiss Jones' lawsuit, calling it an "attempt to dress up a run of the mill commercial disagreement as a salacious RICO conspiracy."
"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," Erica Wolff, an attorney representing Combs, told ABC News.
The I-Team attempted to contact Jones and his attorney on Tuesday but there was no response.
In the last year, nearly a dozen civil lawsuits against Sean Combs have been filed, with specific and graphic accusations, photos and alleged evidence of wrongdoing by the entertainer, along with a timeline of events.
Soffer said it's very likely that had the alleged victims not come forward, there would be no criminal prosecution.
"We've seen this before. We saw it recently with R. Kelly, there were civil lawsuits and civil allegations that ultimately were followed by a criminal case... It helps the government to have all of this information in the public domain, all of it in lawsuits. It gives them some guideposts of where to look," Soffer told the I-Team.
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