Sean “Diddy” Combs is alleged to be enjoying an unusually privileged life at a low-security federal prison in New Jersey, with fellow inmates reportedly cooking, cleaning and doing his laundry for payment.
Four men who spent time in the same unit at Fort Dix said the 56-year-old musician had also obtained contraband mobile phones, alcohol and medication through the prison’s black market. They spoke anonymously about conditions inside the facility.
The accounts allege that inmates prepare Combs special meals, clean bathroom areas before he uses them, make his bed and provide Chinese-style massages. Money is said to be transferred from outside prison into the commissary accounts of those carrying out the work.
One inmate said: “This is not some normal s*** you see in jail. This is some rich s***. It looks crazy, but again, it’s Diddy.”
Sources claimed Combs spends thousands of dollars a month maintaining the arrangements. Meals allegedly prepared for him have included curry chicken, pizza and empanadas, cooked using a makeshift heating element submerged in water.
“After a while, I got tired of cooking,” one man said. “He started going to the Jamaicans.”
Combs is also alleged to have used unauthorised phones to scroll through Instagram and view nude and sexually explicit photographs sent by a former girlfriend. Sources said he acquired Remeron, an antidepressant known in the prison as “rem-roms”, which is prescribed for depression and anxiety but also traded among inmates.
On some weekend nights, he is said to have joined a small group drinking premium liquor allegedly smuggled into the prison by guards. One inmate said he had drunk Hennessy with Combs.
A spokesperson for Combs dismissed the focus on his day-to-day life behind bars, saying: “The continued scrutiny of every mundane detail of Sean Combs’s life in prison has reached the point where the media characterises ordinary prison life as news. The only real news is that Sean continues to serve his sentence while awaiting the court’s decision on his appeal.”
Contraband concerns at Fort Dix
The Bureau of Prisons said it could not comment on the conditions of a particular inmate because of privacy, safety and security concerns. Its spokesperson acknowledged that contraband remained a persistent problem in correctional facilities, including mobile phones, drugs and weapons.
There are reportedly inmates who hold Combs’s phone and fan mail for him. “It’s so much that he gets,” one source said. “He doesn’t have room for it.”
Fort Dix has faced several alleged smuggling schemes, including a recent case involving five people, among them a current and former corrections officer. Prosecutors said knives, marijuana and mobile phones were among the items involved.
Authorities have also charged people over alleged drone drops of illicit goods into the prison yard or on to its roof. In one case, staff intercepted a 20kg laundry bag filled with contraband.
Combs arrived at Fort Dix in October after being sentenced to 50 months in prison for two counts of transporting people across state lines for sexual encounters. His lawyers had sought the facility partly because it offers a drug treatment programme, which can lead to a reduction in an inmate’s sentence.
He entered the programme after arriving, but sources said he was later removed from it and spent time in solitary confinement following a fight with another inmate. They alleged that, after returning to the general population, he resumed a lifestyle supported by other prisoners.
Combs was acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering charges at trial. He is appealing his conviction.
