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Unless you've been living under a rock for the last week, it's been all over the news. The music world has been rocked by a series of shock raids involving record producer and rapper Sean Combs, also known as P. Diddy and Puff Daddy. Federal agents from Homeland Security Investigators and other law enforcement raided Combs homes in Miami and Los Angeles on March 25. Officials said the searches were connected to an investigation by federal authorities in New York, each of which is tied to a sex trafficking probe. A jury found acquitted the mogul on sex trafficking charges, convicted on prostitution counts in bombshell NYC trial. BetOnline had odds set on whether Diddy gets bail at YES -200 and No +150.
It's a headline story that gambling sites had mostly shied away from until now.
Some of the prediction markets were offering odds on whether Combs would be committed to a psychiatric hospital before September 2024. Those odds have since been pulled.
The P. Diddy story has it all with many of the biggest names in entertainment linked to it, including this year's Super Bowl Halftime Show performer Usher.
Sites like BetOnline pushed the envelope back in January by offering odds on who would appear on the infamous Jeffrey Epstein List. Epstein, now dead, was a convicted sex trafficker. His "list" reveal was right up there with the epic fail that was Geraldo Rivera Al Capone vault fiasco of the 1980's: Pretty much "nothing to see here". Yet the betting was record breaking.
Origins of the P. Diddy Probe
Several lawsuits filed late last year raised allegations of sexual assault and rape against Combs.
Diddy, now 54, has proclaimed his innocence.
“Yesterday, there was a gross overuse of military-level force as search warrants were executed at Mr. Combs’ residences,” said the statement from attorney Aaron Dyer following the raids. “There is no excuse for the excessive show of force and hostility exhibited by authorities or the way his children and employees were treated.”
It remains unclear whether last week's searches are related to any of the allegations raised in the lawsuits, which include one from a woman who claims Combs raped her when she was 17.
Usher, Bieber, J-Lo
Shortly after news of the raids, a shocking clip of recording artist Usher emerged.
Diddy and Usher met after the R&B singer signed a record deal with LA Reid, who reportedly sent him to live with Diddy, real name Sean Combs, in Scarsdale, New York for a year. Usher dubbed the experience as "Flavour Camp".
“Sex is so hot in the industry, man,” Usher claimed in the clip: “There was always girls around. You’d open a door and see somebody doing it, or several people in a room having an orgy. You never knew what was going to happen.“
Usher would later appear on the Howard Stern Show to discuss his experience at the Diddy residence.
“I went there to see the lifestyle,” he continued. “And I saw it. But I don’t know if I could indulge and understand what I was even looking at. It was pretty wild. It was crazy.
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“There were very curious things taking place and I didn’t necessarily understand it.”
“You’re a dad now. Would you ever send your kid to a Puffy camp?” Stern asked him.
“Hell no,” Usher replied.
Also resurfacing, footgage of Combs with a then-15-year-old Justin Bieber.
Bieber posted a video of himself with the music mogul on his YouTube channel in 2009.
“You ever seen the movie 48 Hrs? Right now [Justin is] having 48 hours with Diddy, him and his boy,” the rapper says in the video.
“They’re having the times of their lives, like where we hanging out and what we’re doing we can’t really disclose. But it’s definitely a 15-year-old’s dream.”
“I have been given custody of him,” Diddy says. “You know, he’s signed to Usher and I had legal guardianship of Usher when he did his first album. I did Usher’s first album.”
Recording artist J-Lo (real name Jennifer Lopez) is yet another major recording artist and actress tied to Combs, and not in a positive light.
Lopez, Diddy's bodyguard, Anthony “Wolf” Jones, and rapper Jamal “Shyne” Barrow had been arrested back in 2000 following a shooting inside a Times Square club that wounded three bystanders.
The cops found Lopez, then 30, cuffed in “the cage.”
Two law enforcement sources tell The New York Post that the infamous shooting and the trial could possibly be reinvestigated as part of the current sweeping federal probe into Combs activities.
Even Chiefs Super Bowl winning quarterback Patrick Mahomes has been thrown into the mix. He is now distancing himself from Diddy, deleting posts that reference Sean Combs' stage name on his social media accounts.
Back in the year 2014, Mahomes shared two posts that included the phrase "P Diddy" -- which is what the Bad Boy founder went by from 2001-2004.
"Yeah p diddy!!," Mahomes said on X while a freshman at Texas Tech.
Whether BetOnline or other gambling websites opt to offer betting on P. Diddy and others tied to the probe remains to be seen.
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