Sean “Diddy” Combs pays fellow inmates to cook, clean and massage him at a New Jersey federal prison, NBC News reported on 29 September, citing four men from his unit.
NBC granted the men anonymity. They also said the 56-year-old music mogul had access to a contraband mobile phone and to liquor at the low-security Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Fort Dix. NBC said it had reviewed photos and videos taken inside the prison, including footage that appears to show Combs using a phone.
The claims come while Combs’s appeal against his conviction and sentence is still pending. They also come after a year in which his projected release date has moved several times, as prison credits and disciplinary action changed the calculation.
A spokesperson for Combs rejected NBC’s picture of his prison life. The spokesperson said the media were now treating ordinary prison life as news, and that the only real news was that Combs continued to serve his sentence while he awaited a ruling on his appeal.
According to NBC’s sources, people outside the prison pay money into the commissary accounts of inmates who work for Combs, amounting to thousands of dollars a month. The sources said other prisoners make his bed, do his laundry and clean the toilet and shower areas before he uses them. They said inmates also cook special meals for him using improvised heating elements, and that one gives him massages. They added that he drank cognac with a small circle of prisoners at weekends.
Mobile phones are contraband in federal prisons, and Fort Dix has struggled with them before. In 2017, NBC reported on an FBI investigation that found inmates at the facility were using smuggled phones, some hidden in light fixtures and jacket linings.
The new report is not the first time Combs’s conduct at Fort Dix has drawn attention. Within days of his arrival in late 2025, he was reported to have been disciplined over homemade alcohol and an unauthorised three-way phone call. His representatives denied he had broken any rules, but the reported infractions added about a month to his original release date.
In July 2026, he was involved in an altercation with another inmate. ABC News reported that he was placed in solitary confinement afterwards, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons moved his projected release back to 20 February 2028. NBC’s sources said he was later removed from the prison’s drug treatment programme. His lawyers had asked for Fort Dix partly because that programme can shorten an inmate’s sentence.
A New York jury convicted Combs in July 2025 on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution and acquitted him of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. United States District Judge Arun Subramanian sentenced him in October 2025 to 50 months in prison.
His appeal is before the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
