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Diddy must pay prisoner $100 million after default judgment for assault

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A Michigan inmate was awarded $100 million in a civil default judgment against Sean “Diddy” Combs for an alleged sexual assault in 1997.

Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith, who filed the civil suit against Diddy in June, was awarded the damages at a hearing Monday in Lenawee County District Court in Michigan, according to documents obtained by USA TODAY on Tuesday.

A default judgment is entered when one of the parties in a case fails to take action, either by failing to comply with a subpoena or by failing to appear in court. According to court documents, Diddy did not appear in court or respond in this case.

“This man is a convicted felon and sex offender who has been convicted of 14 counts of sexual assault and kidnapping over the past 26 years,” Diddy's attorney Marc Agnifilo wrote in a statement to USA TODAY on Tuesday. “His resume now includes a court fraud from prison, as Mr. Combs has never heard of him, let alone been served with a lawsuit. Mr. Combs hopes to have this conviction overturned quickly.”

According to court documents, Cardello-Smith claimed he met Diddy at an after-party at a Holiday Inn in Detroit in June 1997. He drank with the music mogul and the female guests and initially thought the producer was a “really decent, normal guy.” He later met with Diddy and the two women in a private hotel room, flanked by two security guards, he claimed.

Cardello-Smith claimed he began having sex with one of the women when he felt Diddy touch his butt. The interaction caused Cardello-Smith to disengage, and when the rapper noticed, he offered Cardello-Smith a drink.

“I sat there and slowly got sleepy and started to pass out,” he wrote in his complaint in June. “Then Sean Combs said to me, 'I added something for you. I'm going to get that from you one way or another anyway.'”

Cardello-Smith claimed he woke up in pain and bleeding. “I ran out and left and never came back,” he wrote. The inmate claims he reported the incident to police, but he does not seem to explain what the outcome was. He claimed he “shut himself off” because he “knew I could never tell anyone about it.”

Cardello-Smith is representing himself in the case. The inmate is serving a sentence of up to 75 years for first-degree sexual abuse and kidnapping that occurred in 2008 and 2019 at the Earnest C. Brooks Correctional Facility in Muskegon Heights, Michigan. Cardello-Smith was convicted of third-degree sexual abuse in 1998.

This story develops.

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