The crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried just got a new roommate.
Sean Combs, the rapper known as Diddy, and Bankman-Fried are bunking in the same dormitory of a Brooklyn jail, said a person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the housing arrangement. Their identity is known to Business Insider.
Combs has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center for almost a week after being denied bail on federal sex-trafficking and racketeering charges.
Bankman-Fried has been imprisoned at the same jail since last year. He's serving a 25-year sentence for fraud after stealing $8 billion from customers of his FTX crypto exchange. He funneled money into his crypto-trading fund, Alameda Research; venture-capital investments; and political donations. He also used it for personal spending.
The pair are among roughly 20 inmates housed in the area, which is reserved for those who need special security, including high-profile defendants, people familiar with the situation told NBC News.
Other high-profile people, like the disgraced pop singer R. Kelly and the sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell — who has close ties to Jeffrey Epstein — have previously been held in the jail.
The facility holds about 1,200 detainees and has a reputation for tough conditions. Last week, Combs' lawyers called it too "horrific" for a pretrial defendant, and a lawyer for an inmate who died there after a fight this summer once said it's overcrowded and understaffed, calling it "hell on earth."
Combs' lawyer Marc Agnifilo has since changed course, saying he "can't say enough good things about the M.D.C., which has been responsive to our and his needs," according to The New York Times.
Correction: September 25, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misattributed details about the purpose of the part of the jail where Sam Bankman-Fried and Sean Combs were being held and how many people were being held there. Those details were attributed to unnamed sources in a report from NBC News and did not come from a source who spoke with Business Insider or sources who spoke with The New York Times.
