BRooklyn’s grim Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) is now the foreseeable home of Diddy, aka Sean Combs, one of the most recognizable voices in American entertainment, whose business empire once seemed to know no bounds.

The MDC is five miles from the public housing projects in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where Combs’ biggest star from Bad Boy Records, Biggie Smalls, grew up, but more than twenty miles from the middle-class suburb of Mount Vernon, where Combs himself grew up.

Smalls was murdered in Los Angeles in 1997, but Combs amassed a fortune and worldwide fame by combining street attitude with luxury consumer capitalism. But it all went awry last week. On Wednesday, a New York judge denied $50 million bail for Combs, in part because of witness intimidation allegations, ahead of his trial on three charges including conspiracy to commit organized crime, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, and transportation for the purpose of prostitution.

It’s a harrowing descent into disgrace, even in a world of American celebrity that is now full of them. At the height of his career, Combs could occasionally be seen driving down Broadway in New York in an open-top Bentley, painted baby blue and upholstered in cream. It was the era of opulent bling-bling, and he was its king.

“Puffy connected a lot of dots, exposed people to a different kind of glamour and aspirations and took hip-hop to a different place in the world,” Alan Light, editor of Vibe magazine, told the Guardian earlier this year. “He saw the connections to the fashion world, the entertainment world. He wanted to see how big this could be.”

Combs launched a perfume, a successful clothing line called Sean John and a vodka brand called Cîroc. He owned a $65 million superyacht called Maraya and a black private jet. He hosted famous white parties in the Hamptons and St. Tropez attended by politicians and socialites. He was profiled in Vogue at the time and promoted a line of “modest” jewelry as recently as 2017.

But “moral” was not among the words federal prosecutors used last week to describe Combs’ alleged criminal activities.

They claim he has been involved in serious criminal activity since 2009 that could land him decades in prison if convicted. He has pleaded not guilty. The charges against Combs appear to be based in part on civil lawsuits filed by his ex-girlfriend and Me & U singer Cassie Ventura and four other people who accuse him of rape and abuse.

The charges came from the Southern District of New York State, the main federal district for complex investigations into organized crime cases, including those involving R. Kelly and others, such as Jeffrey Epstein, on sex trafficking charges.

US Attorney Damian Williams said Combs “used the corporate empire he controlled to engage in criminal activities, including sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.”

Much attention was paid to Combs’ alleged day-long drug-induced “outbursts,” which sounded as if they could surpass anything Caligula could muster at the height of Rome’s debauchery.

“Combs abused and exploited women for years,” Williams said. Among other things, he “used violence, threats of violence and coercion to persuade victims to engage in extensive sexual acts with former male business owners, some of whom he transported or had transported across state lines,” making the case a federal prosecution.

Anna Cominsky, director of the criminal defense clinic at New York Law School, cautions against being distracted by the offensive nature of the underlying allegations and alleged conduct.

“The main problem for Combs is the organized crime charge. It’s not just about his personal conduct, but rather that he had an entire organization that helped him facilitate criminal activity. Once that organized crime charge is brought, it’s an uphill battle for the defense,” she said.

Combs’ lawyers proposed a bail package that included a $50 million bond co-signed by his mother and other family members, as well as house arrest, surrender of his passport, weekly drug tests and a visitor log that would have to be presented to authorities every night.

Marc Agnifilo, Combs’ lawyer, insisted: “There is no coercion and no crime.”

But that didn’t work. After twice denying Combs bail, Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr. indicated that his greater concern was not escape but “the risk of obstruction of justice and witness tampering” after the court heard that Combs had allegedly contacted potential witnesses.

The verdict was “not in our favor,” said Agnifilo, adding: “The fight continues.”

The 14-page indictment against Combs may not be the end of the government’s criminal allegations. To prove a conspiracy to commit criminal activity, there must be co-conspirators, and none have been charged. Williams said the investigation is “ongoing.”

But according to Cominsky, co-conspirators do not have to be charged, and often they even become cooperating witnesses – bad news for Combs.

“I think there will be alleged co-conspirators who have now become cooperators,” Cominsky said. “And there may be people with cooperation agreements who will be charged, or they may not be charged at all because of their cooperation.”

What is striking, but not surprising, is how few people have stood up for the former music mogul. One peculiarity of the Epstein case was that the names in his infamous address book later stated that they did not know him or had only met him superficially. The same was true of the disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein – who is now also sitting in a New York prison cell.

Influential radio host Charlamagne Tha God predicted that if Combs was convicted, there would be “others involved” who would “probably go to prison.”

Rapper 50 Cent – ​​Curtis Jackson III – tweeted a photo of himself and actor Drew Barrymore with the caption: “Here I am in good company with (Barrymore) and I don’t have 1,000 bottles of lube in the house,” a reference to the bottles of baby oil and lube found during raids on Combs’ homes.

Danity Kane singer Aubrey O’Day, who frequently criticizes Combs, said she felt “vindicated” by his arrest and called it “a victory for women around the world.”

As the criminal case against Combs continues, prosecutors will present evidence to his defense, including testimony from some 300 subpoenas issued to individuals to appear before a grand jury, inevitably examining how Combs was able to hide his obvious evil from the public eye.

In 1999, author Simon Reynolds described Combs as “a dandyish megalomaniac” who presented himself as “the ultimate player, a kind of hip-hop Donald Trump and ‘black Sinatra’ rolled into one.”

Combs was born in Harlem in 1969. His father was murdered when he was three years old, and Combs grew up in the New York suburb of Mount Vernon. Unlike many of the stars of his music studio, he led a middle-class life. He received a private education and studied business administration at Howard University.

After swindling his way into a job at Uptown Records, signs of trouble soon began to emerge. In 1991, seven people were killed in a stampede at a celebrity basketball game he was hosting. Eight years later, an Interscope Records executive claimed that Combs and two accomplices broke into his office and beat him.

Combs was arrested and later acquitted after a nightclub shooting that left three people injured. Witnesses said they saw Combs with the gun. His lawyers claimed Combs did not keep a gun in the presence of his then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez, who was with him at the time.

Danyel Smith, Vibe The magazine’s former editor recently claimed that a dispute with Combs over the cover in 1997 led to a death threat.

There will inevitably be questions about why it took so long for Combs to be prosecuted. Cominsky points out that an organized crime case can take years to come to fruition and that, unlike the Kelly and Epstein cases, there are no allegations of sexual abuse of minors.

“We just don’t know anything about the abuse allegations yet,” Cominsky said. “We know so little about this case, so little about the evidence that prosecutors have. But according to the defense attorneys, they know more because they negotiated with prosecutors before the charges were filed.”

In Combs’ former world – where image was everything – that’s not a good picture.