For the third time, Sean “Diddy” Combs has been denied bail in his federal sex trafficking case on the East Coast, just ahead of Thanksgiving. Additionally, he faces allegations of having dangled a woman off a balcony of a West Coast apartment building in a fit of rage eight years prior.
A complaint seeking a jury was submitted on November 27 in L.A. Superior Court, featuring numerous details and multiple mentions of the founder of Bad Boy Records’ former partner, Cassie Ventura. The document frequently describes allegations of abuse, and bruises, and includes several photographs, along with a request for compensation estimated to exceed $10 million.
After swiftly resolving a significant legal matter involving allegations of abuse and rape for approximately $30 million in November 2023, Combs now faces a growing number of civil lawsuits. These claims include serious accusations of drugging, violent threats, potential blackmail, physical assault, and rape against aspiring musicians and others involved in his high-profile gatherings. A 55-year-old individual was taken into custody by federal agents in a hotel lobby in New York City on September 16, facing serious charges including racketeering, sex trafficking, and transportation for the purpose of prostitution. The artist, now held at the notorious facility in Brooklyn, may be facing a life sentence if convicted in a trial scheduled to commence on May 5, 2025.
Following a brief reference in Ventura’s lawsuit, along with additional information that has circulated for months and been openly debated (without naming any victims other than Ventura) on social media and in conventional media by songwriter Tiffany Red last year, the allegations in this recent legal action may lead Combs to confront courtrooms on both coasts.
“On or about September 26. 2016, Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs sexually battered Ms. Bryana ”Bana’ Bongolan, and dangled her off of a 17-story-high balcony. and then slammed her into the patio furniture on the balcony,” alleges the seven-claim November 27-filed complaint from the self-described “quintessential starving artist” and one-time Combs clothing designer of what happened to her in Ventura’s luxury Los Angeles pad.
“His outrageous and abhorrent conduct violated Ms. Bongolan’s fundamental dignity, bodily autonomy, and sense of safety,” according to the document. It goes on to detail the supposed attack that occurred at an apartment of Ventura’s where Bongolan was staying with her girlfriend and the singer when an enraged Combs showed up pounding on the door. “This event was the culmination of a series of threats, intimidation, and violence that colored many of Ms. Bongolan’s interactions with Mr. Combs from the day she met him.”
“The September 26 assault ultimately proved that Ms. Bongolan was correct to fear Mr. Combs and has resulted in deep and lasting harm,” the filing by Miller Barondess’ James R. Nikraftar adds of the West L.A.-set incident. “Mr. Combs’ threats that he was the ‘motherf*cking devil,’ and that ‘he could kill’ her were intended to terrorize intimidate, and instill fear. Therefore when he forcibly groped her breasts, dangled her from a balcony and battered her, she reasonably believed that Mr. Combs’ assault was him making good on his threats.”
The act of suspending someone from a balcony may ring a bell from the annals of hip-hop history, as figures like the currently incarcerated former head of Death Row Records, Suge Knight, have been rumored to have engaged in similar actions before. One of the most infamous stories involves a former NFL replacement player who allegedly threatened Vanilla Ice by hanging him off the edge of a Bel Air building over the rights to his hit song “Ice, Ice Baby” during the early 1990s. Vanilla Ice has repeatedly emphasized that the situation has been blown out of proportion, asserting that Knight never dangled him from a balcony, and that the matter was ultimately resolved in court.
In this situation, regarding Combs, the circumstances are entirely different and extend far beyond financial matters.
The 17-page complaint states: “The sole intention of hanging someone over a balcony is to either cause their death or to deliberately instill fear, stripping them of any sense of control over their own body and safety.” It comes as no shock that this is precisely what occurred with Ms. Bongolan.
Considering Combs has refuted all allegations against him, and recently in his East Coast criminal case appears to be retracting his earlier apology regarding a 2016 hotel corridor incident involving Ventura that was recorded on security footage, it is expected that his representatives are dismissing Bangolan’s claims from the West Coast.