Sean "Diddy" Combs' downfall was a steep one.
After a sex-trafficking indictment, the superwealthy rapper and music mogul has been forced to leave behind his grand Los Angeles and Miami mansions for the confines of a notorious Brooklyn, New York, jail.
Federal Bureau of Prisons records show that Combs, 54, was sent to the infamous Metropolitan Detention Center — which has housed other high-profile figures, including R. Kelly, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Ghislaine Maxwell — after a judge turned down his first request to post a $50 million bond.
A former warden at the facility told Business Insider that Combs could expect to be treated like any of the other 1,200 inmates at the Brooklyn jail.
"Any time one is being detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center, it's never going to be a picnic," Cameron Lindsay, the retired warden, told BI.
The jail "is hell on earth for anyone unfortunate enough to live there," Mark Bederow, a criminal-defense attorney and former Manhattan prosecutor, told BI.
"To go from living in mansions in Beverly Hills and Miami to the MDC is as epic a change in circumstances as one can have," Bederow said, adding: "All that money won't make it warmer when it's cold, colder when it's hot. It won't make the food more edible. It won't make the cockroaches stay away."
During a Manhattan federal court hearing Tuesday, US Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky ordered Combs to be sent to jail ahead of his criminal trial. Prosecutors argued in court that Combs could try to flee the country or attempt to meddle in the sex-trafficking investigation.
At the hearing, Combs pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, and illegal transportation for prostitution.
Combs' attorneys filed an appeal to the judge's decision in an attempt to get their entrepreneur client out of lockup, but it failed.
At a court hearing Wednesday, US District Judge Andrew Carter, who will oversee the not-yet-scheduled trial, denied Comb's appeal and ordered that he remain in jail until his trial.
Combs to be held in Specialized Housing Unit away from the general population
Lindsay, the former warden at the jail — which has long faced scrutiny over reports of poor conditions and violence — told BI Combs should not expect any special treatment during his stay at the facility where pretrial detainees are held.
"He'll be treated just like every other inmate," Lindsay, who served as the warden at the Metropolitan Detention Center from 2007 to 2009, said.
Combs' defense attorney, Marc Agnifilo, told the court at the Wednesday appeal hearing that Combs would be housed in the Special Housing Unit of the jail, which is separate from the general population. Agnifilo said it was "certainly hard to be an inmate" and that it's tough to prepare for trial given the various limitations Combs is facing.
Agnifilio also asked the judge whether he could recommend that Combs be housed in Essex County jail instead of the MDC. The judge, noting that the BOP normally decides where an inmate be held, asked Combs' lawyers and prosecutors to file a joint status report before he decides.
Lindsay said Combs was most likely being held away from the general population for his own safety.
"Given his status as a celebrity and a rap star, I would believe, of course, that he would be single-celled and isolated under very austere conditions," Lindsay told BI.
The space would be a small, concrete "stereotypical" jail cell with a steel sink and toilet, Lindsay said, calling it "shockingly different" from the lifestyle Combs is accustomed to.
Lindsay said Combs was better off separated from the general population because the charges against him make him a target for the other detainees.
Federal prosecutors allege in an indictment that for decades Combs "abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct."
Combs' celebrity status "combined with the fact that the charges against him relate to the abuse of women, that certainly would make him an easier target — a target that some inmates definitely would attempt to exploit," Lindsay said.
Combs' attorneys declined to comment for this story earlier Wednesday, but pointed BI to the appeal they filed, which says, "Several courts in this District have recognized that the conditions at Metropolitan Detention Center are not fit for pre-trial detention."
The lawyers wrote: "Just earlier this summer, an inmate was murdered. At least four inmates have died by suicide there in the past three years. Numerous Courts in this district have raised concerns with the horrific conditions of detention there."
Bederow, the former federal prosecutor, told BI that conditions at the jail were "so bad that lawyers make motions to avoid detention based upon the wretched conditions there."
"And sometimes it works," he said.
