Updated on 9/12/2024 at 1:50p.m. ET: Less than 48 hours after a judge ordered Diddy to fork over $100 million as a result of a civil suit filed by a Detroit inmate, his legal team is speaking out and calling into question the validity of the suit and its filer, Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith.
In a statement sent to The Root, Diddy’s attorney Marc Agnifilo said:
This man is a convicted felon and sexual predator, who has been sentenced on 14 counts of sexual assault and kidnapping over the last 26 years. His resume now includes committing a fraud on the court from prison, as Mr. Combs has never heard of him let alone been served with any lawsuit. Mr. Combs looks forward to having this judgment swiftly dismissed.
See original story below.
There’s arguably no one happier in the world than Detroit inmate Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith, who learned Monday (Sept. 9) that he’d been awarded $100 million in his lawsuit against Diddy.
Cardello-Smith filed a civil suit against the disgraced music mogul, alleging that he drugged and sexually assaulted him at a party in Detroit back in 1997. They allegedly met years ago while Cardello-Smith was an employee in a local restaurant and the hospitality industry, according to an interview with the Detroit Metro Times.
His huge payday comes thanks to a Michigan circuit court judge who handed down the default judgment against Diddy after he opted not to appear for a virtual hearing about the case. Per the Times, he was also granted a restraining order against the Bad Boy mogul, which prevents him from selling off any of his assets in order to pay for the suit. (If and how that order applies to Diddy’s L.A. mansion that he recently put up for sale is unclear).
In August, during a previous hearing for the case, Cardello-Smith told the judge that he’d met with Diddy to discuss the suit and provided visitor log receipts of his appearance. During their conversation, Cardello-Smith alleged that the hip-hop star offered him $2.3 million to dismiss the case and allegedly gave him a cryptic warning should he decided to proceed instead, per the Times.
While Cardello-Smith is currently serving time as a part of an unrelated sentence at the Earnest C. Brooks Correctional Facility, the judgment in his case against Diddy stands to be the largest awarded to a non-attorney and a currently incarcerated inmate in history.
As previously reported by The Root, this is just one of a handful of sexual assault lawsuits that have been lobbed against Diddy. Outside of this, the only other suit that has been settled on the record is one filed against him by his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura in November 2023.