Cassie’s mother tells court Combs demanded thousands of dollars from her

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs demanded 20,000 dollars (£14,962) from Casandra “Cassie” Ventura’s mother and threatened to release explicit sex tapes of his longtime girlfriend when he became angry that she was dating someone else, her mother told the hip-hop mogul’s sex trafficking trial.

Regina Ventura said she felt “physically sick” when she received an email from Cassie in late 2011 saying Combs was planning to release two explicit videos of her and send someone to hurt her and the man she was seeing, rapper Kid Cudi.

“I did not understand a lot of it. The sex tapes threw me,” Ms Ventura told the Manhattan federal court.

Ms Ventura, from Connecticut, said she then received a demand from Combs for 20,000 dollars “to recoup money he had spent on her because he was unhappy she was in a relationship with Kid Cudi”.

“He was angry that he had spent money on her and she went with another person,” she said.

Ms Ventura said she used a home equity loan to make the payment because “I was scared for my daughter’s safety”. Days later, she said, the money was returned, and before long, Cassie was dating Combs again.

Ms Ventura was in the witness box for less than half an hour, in part because defence lawyer Marc Agnifilo declined to cross-examine her.

During her evidence, the jury was shown photographs of bruises on Cassie’s body that Ms Ventura said were taken when her daughter came home for Christmas in 2011.

Before the jury arrived on Tuesday, Mr Agnifilo tried to persuade Judge Arun Subramanian to disallow the evidence, saying it was “purely prejudicial” because it illustrated the wide difference between the financial status of the Ventura family and Combs.

The judge allowed it though, saying the threats to release sex tapes and harm Cassie made it an instance of “potential extortion”.

The testimony came during the second week of the trial, which is scheduled to last up to two months. If convicted of the charges he faces, including racketeering, the Bad Boy Records founder could be sentenced to at least 15 years in prison.

Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he used threats and his powerful position in the hip-hop world to abuse women and others, and force Cassie to take part in drug-fuelled sexual performances with other men that she said left her too drained to pursue her singing career.

Earlier on Tuesday, David James, Combs’ personal assistant from 2007 to 2009, told the court that the job that seemed to come with increasing perils.

He said he leave his job when he realised that his life had been put in danger after he was forced to drive a car in which an angry Combs sat in the back seat with three handguns on his lap.

Mr James said his job sometimes required him to ensure that hotel rooms where Combs stayed under the name “Frank Black” were stocked with the musician’s comforts, including fresh underwear, an iPod, apple sauce, vodka, baby oil, Viagra and condoms.

There were also surprising moments, Mr James said, including one in 2008 when Combs asked him to bring an iPod from his Miami home to a hotel room. Upon entering, Mr James said he saw Cassie on the bed with a white comforter pulled up to her neck and an unfamiliar naked man running from the room.

Another time, he said Combs summoned him to his office to show him video he had recorded at a party of James dancing wildly and told him: “Ok, I’m going to keep this footage in case I ever need it.” Mr James said he took it as a threat to keep him in line.

Cassie gave evidence last week that Combs threatened to release videos of her having sex with male sex workers during so-called freak-offs Combs orchestrated if she did not do as he said.

Mr James also described being required to take lie detector tests twice when Combs was trying to find out who stole cash in one instance and a watch in another.

He said Combs was on drugs nearly every day, often taking Percocet by day and ecstasy by night. When he stocked Combs’ hotel rooms, he said, drugs were in a bag dropped off by security, including a pill meant to look like then-president Barack Obama.

The moment when Mr James saw the three guns on Combs’ lap came when he testified that he was involved in Combs’ attempt to confront his music industry rival Suge Knight at a Los Angeles diner in November 2008 — an incident that Cassie also spoke about. He said he quit soon afterwards.

“I was real shook up by it,” Mr James said. “This was the first time being Mr Combs’ assistant that I realised my life was in danger.”

Before Tuesday’s lunch break, Sharay Hayes, an exotic dancer known as The Punisher, gave evidence that Combs and Cassie brought him into the freak-offs world. He said a woman – Cassie using a pseudonym – called and told him it was her birthday and that her husband said she should hire a dancer.

Mr Hayes said he arrived at a Manhattan hotel room expecting to perform a striptease for a small group of people but instead found the woman who hired him – whom he later found out was Cassie – alone with an otherwise naked man who hid his face with a burqa-like cloth. That man, he said, turned out to be Combs.

Hayes recalled seeing bottles of baby oil in bowls of water and getting handed a stack of 800 dollars (£600) in cash.

Later, after Combs watched him have a sexual encounter with Cassie, he said he was handed an additional 1,200 dollars (£897).

He said he was a fan of Combs but did not realise it was him in the room until a subsequent encounter at another hotel where the message on the TV screen said: “Essex House would like to welcome Mr Sean Combs.”

Jurors also saw parts of two AR-15 rifles that federal agents found last year while searching Combs’ mansion on Star Island, a celebrity enclave off Miami.

Special agent Gerard Gannon, of Homeland Security Investigations, said in evidence that agents executing a search warrant for the property in March 2024 used an armoured vehicle to bust through Combs’ security gate and had teams on boats nearby.

In addition to weapons, he said they found platform high heels and items that prosecutors say Combs frequently used during his “freak-off” sex marathons, including lingerie, sex toys, baby oil, lubricant and condoms.