Checked-In At the Fontainebleau: Diddy, Sex Lives, and Video Tape
Is Diddy’s Scandal a Continuation of the Post-WWII Nexus of Power, Crime, and Celebrity?
On August 31, 2024, TMZ exclusively reported that the trafficking investigation into Diddy had expanded to include an unnamed Miami hotel. Diddy has been under investigation for some time, and had two of his mansions were raided by Homeland Security in March 2024. In May, CNN reported that a federal grand jury had been assembled to determine whether there is enough evidence to indict Diddy and associates for any crimes. This is a broad investigation ranging from sex trafficking, money laundering, and illegal drugs. The investigation is run out of the Southern District of New York.
Hey yo Diddy, it's Ross
I'm still at the Fontainebleau my nigga
I overslept, called downstairs, they said you extended this shit
Spanish bitches still here
Send some more Ciroc over my nigga
I need some trees too
Bugatti Boyz (uh)Fontaine Bleau by Bugatti Boyz featuring Masspike Miles
A few weeks ago, a grand jury subpoena was issued, demanding a litany of documents from the hotel related to Diddy, his ex-girlfriend Daphne Joy (who is also 50 Cent’s ex-girlfriend), and Bad Boy Entertainment. The subpoena requested information such as:
Check-in and check-out dates
Room numbers
Guest preferences and requests
Billing information, including room service
Computer IP addresses and logins for the individuals
Identification and vehicle information
Surveillance footage from the hotel
The court is seeking documents from this unnamed hotel stretching all the way back to January 1, 2008. I am confident that the unnamed hotel is the Fontainebleau, which opened in Miami in 2008 after an extensive renovation. Diddy attended the the hotel’s grand opening and has a longstanding relationship with the establishment. The Fontainebleau is just minutes away from Diddy’s mansions on Star Island, the first of which he purchased in 2003.
The Fontainebleau and Diddy go way back, including an infamous incident in 2014 when Diddy dislocated Drake’s shoulder. As recently as 2023, the hotel was still hosting Diddy events. Social media comments from young people warning others that trafficking occurring at the hotel are not difficult to find.
Who Does Diddy Answer To?
Diddy was born into the Black mob. His father, Melvin Combs, worked for the notorious drug kingpin Frank Lucas and was shot dead in 1972. Despite this, Diddy rose in the ranks of a mob, one operates at the spurious intersection of white-collar corporate American crime and street-level violence.
We know they are powerful enough to protect Diddy for decades, shielding him from consequences for committing an array of serious crimes (car bomb!) across multiple jurisdictions. There are enough connections to the Russian Jewish mob to warrant further exploration, such as Diddy’s connection to Clive Davis and MCA Records.
It’s a most precarious and often uncomfortable position to be a white woman accusing a Black man of being a race traitor, but as was the case with R. Kelly, Diddy has predominantly preyed upon the Black community. In cases like these, if you are an outsider with wealth, you often need an insider to run the operation.
When I worked at a transitional housing program on the West Side of Atlanta, the residents often schooled me on how pop culture consistently fails Black communities—voices that rarely get the attention they deserve. Unfortunately, today’s debates on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) have overshadowed the realities of navigating and addressing interlocking oppressive systems. For example, a significant portion of those killed by police have disabilities, while male victims of sexual violence are poorly served by existing services.
Of All The Gin Joints in All the World…
The Fontainebleau is located in Miami, a city intricately tied to the entertainment industry, espionage, and transnational organized crime. Miami is not only one of the wealthiest cities in the U.S., but it also has one of the highest rates of income inequality, making it a unique and complex setting for these industries and criminal networks to thrive.
This is a good summary of how Miami is uniquely situated within the U.S.’s foreign and criminal affairs:
Covert City tells the history of how the entire city of Miami was constructed in the image of the US-Cuba rivalry. From the Bay of Pigs invasion to the death of Fidel Castro, the book shows how Miami is a hub for money and cocaine but also secrets and ideologies. Cuban exiles built criminal and political organizations in the city, leading Washington to set up a CIA station there, codenamed JMWAVE. It monitored gang activities, plotted secret operations against Castro, and became a base for surveilling Latin American neighbors. The money and infrastructure built for the CIA was integral to the development of Miami.
Fontainebleau: The Hot (vice!) & Cold War
The Fontainebleau has quite a storied history, serving as a backdrop for Hollywood movies, organized crime, and murder.
[The Fontainebleau] opened on December 20, 1954, with a party for 1,600 people, including New York mayor Robert Wagner, who flew to Miami with a contingent of international press. There was such a crush of people on opening night that much of the carpeting was ruined and had to be replaced. Patti Page sang the “Fontainebleau Waltz” in the La Ronde Room, and above the hotel whenever an Eastern Airlines jet arrived or departed Miami International it tipped its wings in salute. “Everything was in French,” reported the Miami Herald, “including the confusion.”
- Fool’s Paradise by Steven S. Gaines, p. 62
The Fontainebleau was the vision of Ben Novack Sr., and for a time, it stood as one of the most famous hotels in the world. Novack’s father founded the renowned Laurel’s Country Club in the Catskill Mountains, but after relocating to Miami during WWII, Novack really began building his own hotel empire. The Fontainebleau was designed as a lavish playground for the ultra-powerful, wealthy, and famous.
One of Novack’s key financiers Salvatore “Sam” Giancana, the notorious head of the Chicago Outfit—an organization originally founded by Al Capone. It is a straight line from these “wiseguys” of yesteryear to the players running the music industry today. The Fontainebleau itself became a hub for covert dealings, such as a meeting between a CIA middleman and "Sam Gold" (Giancana) to discuss mafia involvement in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.
Is it any wonder the Fontainebleau hosted a 1961 event for the Cuban Employees in Exhile, with an invitation sent to CIA Director Allen Dulles from the Fontainebleau’s executive office.
Contemporary people may only be familiar with the Fontainebleau because of the grisly murders of Ben Novack Sr.’s wife and son, both of which received the true crime treatment. Though the Fontainebleau was no longer under the Novack family’s control, there was still a motive to murder Ben Novack Jr., as he had built a successful convention empire of his own.
Bernice Novack’s death was initially not considered suspicious. I’m not particularly interested in “true” crime because the devil isn’t usually in the details—it’s in the powerful networks that surround these events.
On July 12, 2009, three months after Bernice's death, Ben Novack Jr., 53, Bernice's only child, and heir to the hotel fortune, was slain execution-style at the Rye Town Hilton hotel in Rye Brook, about 35 minutes from Manhattan. The owner of a successful convention planning business, Novack had the hotel booked solid that weekend. More than 1,000 employees from Amway Global International, his most prestigious client, squeezed into the 455-room hotel -- and all of them were potential suspects, including his wife, a former stripper he had been married to for almost 19 years.
It was she who would find her husband's body: lying face down on the floor of his hotel room, in his underwear, his face covered in duct tape, his arms taped behind his back and his legs taped below his knees. His head was covered in blood. Later it would be learned that his killers had cut out his eyes.
- Julie Knipe Brown, CBS News, July 13, 2013
What stands out to me is that Novack Jr. had a close relationship with Amway, which many people allege operates like a cult. In the end, there isn’t much difference between cults, organized crime, and rogue intelligence agencies.
Narcy Novack was convicted of the murders, along with her accomplices. A prolonged battle over the estate followed, with numerous players involved. These included Narcy’s daughter, Maya Abed, and Andrea Hissom Wynn, the wife of Las Vegas hotel magnate Steve Wynn, who is also the daughter of Arlene Novack, Ben Novack Sr.'s sister.
It is quite the arrangement for wealthy hoteliers to intermarry.
The Soffer Family Is Under New Management
The current owner of the Fontainebleau is billionaire Jeffrey Soffer, son of real estate magnate Donald Soffer, who built Turnberry Associates into a real estate powerhouse. Jeffrey Soffer holds considerable influence in Miami, sitting at the crossroads of capital, politics, and crime.
Soffer’s friends included the speedboat magnate Donald Aronow, who was in turn a friend and supporter of George H. W. Bush’s. In February 1987 …Aronow was gunned down in a Mafia-style execution.
- All The Truth Is Out, Matt Bai, 2014
On the day after Aronow’s murder, according to Suzanne, Don Soffer received a phone call at his Tumberrv Isle office. The voice on the line said only two words: “You’re next. Soffer immediately hired five bodyguards. At six the next morning, he boarded the Monkey Business and headed out into the Atlantic. He remained out of sight for a week. - Blue Thunder, Thomas Burdick, 1990
It seems that President George H.W. Bush was keenly aware of what was unfolding in Miami, a city run by the same mob network that ascended Ronald Reagan into the White House. Make Miami America Again!
The 2009 Fontainebleau Crash
The Soffers got into the Fontainebleau business at the wrong time.
In 2005, Turnberry paid $325 million for the iconic Fontainebleau Miami Beach resort, then spent $650 million more on a gut renovation of the storied hotel.
- Miami Herald, March 4, 2019
However, by 2009, in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, the Fontainebleau Vegas had gone bankrupt, and the Fontainebleau Miami was on the verge of defaulting on its $690 million loan. Meanwhile, …
…Ben Novack Jr., heir to the Fontainebleau fortune, got himself murdered in New York, keeping the hotel's name in the news for all the wrong reasons (unless you're trying to attract the amputee porn crowd.)
- Miami New Times, September 4, 2009
Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations' drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.
Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result. - The Guardian, December 12, 2009
A Generational Divide: Jeffrey and Jackie Soffer
In 2019, Jeffrey and his sister Jackie divided their business assets. The timing is interesting.
Jackie is married to Craig Robins, son of Gerard “Jerry” Robins, who also acquired extensive real estate holdings in South Florida. When merging real estate dynasties, legacies must always be taken into account.
Craig grew up on Star Island, I wonder what he thinks of Diddy’s raided mansion there? Or of Diddy’s relationship with Jeffrey Soffer?
In Miami, it isn’t hard to find a gangster, like Chris Paciello, former boyfriend of Sofia Vergara.
While Diddy’s own connections remain somewhat elusive, there are enough clues to suggest that he is tied to people embedded in the highest echelons of society. These individuals traffic in human misery, document their exploits with impunity, and maintain a veneer of respectability as philanthropists—all while evading taxes at every opportunity.
The Koch Brothers, Diddy, and the High-Stakes Revival of Fontainebleau Las Vegas
In 2021, Fontainebleau Development and Koch Real Estate Investments purchased a 25-acre property to build Fontainebleau Las Vegas. This gigantic construction project and required $2.2 billion in financing to complete.
The grand opening featured a headline performance by Justin Timberlake and high-profile guests like Tom Brady, Kim Kardashian, and Ivanka Trump. For Jeffrey Soffer, this was a major moment, as the previous attempt to establish Fontainebleau Vegas had collapsed into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009. Only time will tell if it can stay open.
Fun fact: Justin Timberlake was paid $6 million to perform at Fontainebleau’s opening night gala. That night, he stayed at Wynn. Awkward. - Vital Vegas, June 10, 2024
Chase Koch, Liz Koch and CEO of Koch Industries Charles Koch attend the Fontainebleau Las Vegas Star-Studded Grand Opening Celebration on December 13, 2023 in Las Vegas
The billionaire Koch brothers are an interesting partner for Soffer. hey have a history of supporting projects tied to Diddy, including gifts to charter schools associated with him. In 2017, the Charles Koch Foundation and the Peter and Carmen Lucia Buck Foundation gave a combined $1.35 million to Capital Preparatory Schools. Despite such high-profile backing, Capital Prep has faced significant challenges, with parents, students, and former staff describing “an extremely dysfunctional school environment marked by high teacher turnover and frequent violence.”
Music mogul and entrepreneur Sean “P-Diddy” Combs cofounded the African American-headed charter management organization’s second school, Capital Preparatory Harlem Charter School, in August 2016.
- Charles Koch Foundation press release, July 6, 2017
The Koch brothers’ connections to Diddy’s orbit extend even further, including Andreessen Horowitz and Joe Lonsdale.
In 2018, Andreessen Horowitz, a private venture capital firm, launched a Cultural Leadership Fund to target Black people’s involvement with the tech industry.
The basic goals of the CLF are twofold:
Connect the greatest cultural leaders in the world to the best new technology companies
Enable more young African Americans to enter the technology industry
To accomplish this, we created a new fund with Limited Partners who are exclusively cultural leaders including Sean “Diddy” Combs, Shonda Rhimes, Will and Jada Smith, Quincy Jones, Kevin Durant, Chance the Rapper, Nasir Jones, Will Packer, Charles Phillips, Edith Cooper, John Thompson, Robin Washington, Richelieu Dennis, Shellye Archambeau, and more.
Cultural Degeneracy Founders Fund
Is it any wonder that Perez Hilton, the Miami-raised Cuban-American gossip blogger, received a fully comped stay at the Fontainebleau Vegas right when it opened? Perez always turns up in the most curious of stories. I’m curious what other influencers got paid for the stay… and to OBEY!
The Predators’ Bali
People with similar interests congregate with one another so on the edges of powerful networks. Thus, it can be difficult to ascertain culpability and I’m not gonna give it the ‘ole partisan try. I bet Trump and the Clintons know exactly what Diddy was up, but couldn’t do anything about it - even as President. In this world theres lots of weird murders, like LOTS!
Here, you can get got. I find it implausible that Trump would orchestrate his own fake assassination attempt.
It is at this point where I believe the public’s understanding of the deep state gets conflated with, sometimes state-sponsored, transnational organized crime. They not like us!!
Jeffrey Soffer, for example, seems to be one of those billionaires who enjoys keeping close ties to celebrities. This includes figures like disgraced film director, Brett Ratner who fled to Israel after sexual assault allegations, and Russell Simmons, who presumably fled to Bali in 2018 for similar reasons.
Brett Ratner, born to a Cuban immigrant mother and raised in Miami, got his start in New York’s music video scene. His connections run deep, from associates like James Packer and Len Blavatnik, to perhaps the most intriguing of them all—St. Louis-bred mobster Alvin Malnik.
Interviewer: I hear legendary stories about your mom, but never anything about your father. If I'm not striking too tender a nerve, can you tell what your relationship with him was like?
Brett Ratner: He passed away and I didn't know him really. I consider my father to be [philanthropist and The Forge restaurant founder] Alvin Malnik. Al raised me. I considered Shareef to be my big brother. I feel like I'm part of the Malnik family. Al is really my father. He was at my birthday party last night, too.- Aventura Business Monthly, May 1, 2011
Alvin Malnik's life is full of bewildering connections—his blog is a fascinating journey. In his earlier years, he rubbed shoulders with both Meyer Lansky and Michael Jackson, though not at the same time.
Ushering In A New Era
It’s particularly interesting that Usher, fresh off his high-profile Super Bowl halftime show, decided to travel to Bali to visit Russell Simmons. This news was received poorly by many fans, given Simmons' well-documented history of abuse. Coincidentally, around the same time Usher arrived in Bali, Simmons was served with a defamation lawsuit from former music executive Drew Dixon.
Powerful networks, entrenched over generations, are difficult to dismantle, and justice seekers often need to get close to them to expose their roots. Audre Lorde famously wrote, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. However, I’d counter that one must enter the house and remain unfazed by any perceptions of guilt by association.
Usher’s connection to Diddy also resurfaced during this time. At just 13 years old, Usher signed a record deal with LA Reid, who sent him to live with Diddy for what was supposedly an artist development program called “Flavour Camp.” After the raids on Diddy’s properties in March 2024, an old clip began circulating in which Usher explained why no child should be exposed to Diddy’s environment.
While Kanye has asserted that Diddy is a federal informant—but what does that really mean when criminal influence has penetrated legitimate halls of power so deeply? I continue to look for signs of what is truly happening behind the scenes, and a recent photo of Usher and Rev. Warnock gives me hope.
Perhaps millennial celebrities are finally able to demystify the true pulleys and levers of power in the halls of influence.
Early in his career, Justin Bieber also fell under Diddy’s sphere of influence. As in the case of Usher it is quite disturbing. Bieber’s trajectory also intersects with celebrity-centric, money-cleaning mega-churches like Hillsong, ChurcHome, and VOUS Church Miami. The Roys Report is an excellent source for investigations into these church-related issues.
As a side note, Diddy worked to improve his public image through Churchome board member and longtime spiritual advisor Bishop T.D. Jakes. Meanwhile, Lou Taylor, a former Churchome board member, also serves as Diddy's business manager. Interestingly, both of Diddy's homes that were raided by Homeland Security are owned by LLCs linked to Lou Taylor’s Tri Star Sports and Entertainment.
A Texas-Florida Connection: Governor DeSantis, Soffer, & Lonsdale
Many strange events and puzzling networks have emerged from South Florida, though I’m still trying to piece together the Texas connection with Governor Greg Abbott. As the saying goes—follow the money. Jeffrey Soffer, a significant political donor to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, has even provided DeSantis with the use of his private jet.
However, despite his ties to DeSantis, Soffer seems to be losing favor with the Miami billionaire donor class. Earlier this year, he failed to get legislation passed that would have allowed for a casino at the Fontainebleau Miami, even with the governor’s support.
Another billionaire, Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir, is also a strong supporter of Gov. DeSantis. Lonsdale is a new character to me, but his connects a lot of dots between the Russian world and Hollywood. Today a fresh and damning write-up on Lonsdale was published by
.The Celebrity/Investor Connection
It has been telling how certain broligarchs have hailed Elon Musk’s Twitter as the last bulwark for free speech. They fear the legal troubles of Telegram’s founder and the Tate brothers signal an imminent totalitarian takeover. “YOU WILL BE NEXT!” they warn. For those interested in following these networks,
offers an insightful perspective.However, this same “free speech’ gang has ignored the revelation of a more comprehensive list of investors who helped Musk purchase Twitter in 2022. Investors include Joe Lonsdale, Diddy, Andreessen Horowitz. While some investors were already known, like Diddy investing $10 million, others were more surprising like Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia.
Amid the noise surrounding efforts to combat trafficking, it becomes difficult for the general public to sus out what is really going on.
The truth is that there’s a powerful network profiting from sex trafficking and other illicit activities—often facilitated by social media platforms, access to private jets, celebrities, dirty money, and foreign intelligence operatives.
You Got Punk’d By Ashton Kutcher
Ashton Kutcher’s big break came in 1998 with That ‘70s Show. (In 2001, a young women he was dating was brutally murdered under mysterious circumstances). By 2003, Ashton began dating Demi Moore, who is 15 years his elder and has many handler traits. That same year, Kutcher launched Punk’d on MTV.
A Hidden Camera Show similar to Candid Camera but famous celebrities are the victims. Each week Ashton and his crew of pranksters play a joke on celebrities such as Justin Timberlake and Frankie Muniz. - IMDB
Many of the celebrities featured on Punk’d—including Brett Ratner, Diddy, and Usher-have already come up in this article. The whole vibe of the show is a camp version of a blackmail ring, like setting celebrities up, clandestinely recording their reactions, and then leveraging that footage to get them to sign releases for airing.
“Don’t ever actually piss [Ashton] off because the footage that doesn’t make it on is so incriminating to say the east.” - Danny Masterson
Diddy and Ashton have been very close for two decades, originally meeting via MTV. Diddy was involved in another TV project, Making the Band, which he started with boy band impresario Lou Pearlman.
Like Diddy, Kutcher gained a reputation as a savvy investor. In 2011, both invested in Tinychat, a startup focused on live video chats. Concerns quickly arose about minors’ privacy and safety on the platform, and videos surfaced of Kutcher having inappropriate conversations on Tinychat while children were present.
Kutcher’s business interests also intersected with Andreessen Horowitz.
Kutcher and Lonsdale Combat Child Sex Trafficking
Thorn is an anti-trafficking organization organization co-founded by Kutcher with assistance from Joe Lonsdale. Here Lonsdale describes heir joint venture:
More than 70 percent of child sex trafficking happens online. When Hollywood superstar Ashton Kutcher first heard this statistic, he knew he had to do something to stop it. His efforts took him to Silicon Valley—where, hoping to enlist leading tech entrepreneurs in the fight against online trafficking, he first met Joe. Through their work together, Kutcher's organization, Thorn, has built software and processes that have enabled governments to rescue thousands of children from sexual abuse. [Joe partnered with Ashton in Thorn’s early days to enlist talent, refine strategy, and reach scale, as well as serving on its board.]
Kutcher left Thorn after facing backlash for defending Danny Masterson, his That ‘70s Show co-star and convicted rapist, who also happens to be a Scientologist…
Ashton Kutcher has resigned as chairman of the board of Thorn, the anti-child-sex-abuse organization he co-founded in 2009 with his then-wife Demi Moore. His wife Mila Kunis, who served as an observer on the organization's board, is also stepping down. The move comes in the wake of outrage over their letters of support for Danny Masterson, who has been convicted of raping two women.
"Victims of sexual abuse have been historically silenced and the character statement I submitted is yet another painful instance of questioning victims who are brave enough to share their experiences," Kutcher wrote in a Sept. 14 letter to Thorn's board, which was shared exclusively with TIME.
There’s been some online speculation and myth-making around Kutcher, with claims suggesting he is a CIA asset.
While it seems obvious that he is an asset for an intelligence agency, the question remains—which one?
The Russian Connection
When the take down of Diddy began, he quickly lawyered up with Michael Tremonte, who represented Rinat Akhmetshin during Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
Mr. Akhmetshin’s meeting with Trump campaign officials is of keen interest to Mr. Mueller, who is investigating the Kremlin’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. Of all the visitors who attended the June 2016 session at the Trump Tower, he appears to have the most direct ties to Russian intelligence. The session was arranged by a Russian businessman close to Mr. Putin whose emissary promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
Mr. Akhmetshin, who did not respond to repeated requests to be interviewed for this article, has said he was a last-minute guest at an inconsequential get-together. Trump campaign officials have dismissed the meeting as part of an effort to amend an American law that placed sanctions on Russians for human rights abuses. The 2012 law, known as the Magnitsky Act, infuriated Mr. Putin, whose government retaliated by restricting adoptions of Russian children by Americans. - New York Times, August 21, 2017
Akhmetshin is also an associate of Suleiman Kerimov, a now sanctioned Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin. Kerimov made (STOLE!) his fortune during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The U.S. Treasury Department blocked Kerimov’s $1 billion company in 2022 after Ukraine was invaded by Russia. The flood of dirty money into the United States harms everyday Americans in a constellation of ways.
The idea that a Russian oligarch could derail a homeless shelter in San Francisco may seem outlandish, but experts say it is just another example of the complications that can result when foreign billionaires plant their money in secret U.S. assets. They’re often more concerned with finding investments they can keep secret than they are in finding the best possible bargain, giving foreign oligarchs a reputation for overpaying and driving up real estate prices, experts said.
“You are pricing out legit buyers,” said Lakshmi Kumar, policy director at Global Financial Integrity, a Washington-based think tank. - The San Francisco Chronicle, November 17, 2022
Odds and Ends
Ashton Kutcher’s wife, Mila Kunis, immigrated to the U.S. from Ukraine as a child and speaks fluent Russian.
Koch Industries happens to be one of the last “American” companies to continue to operate in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
Lonsdale’s venture capital group, 8VC, invested in Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and employs the children of Russian oligarchs.
There’s much more to explore regarding the Russian Direct Investment Fund’s involvement with Musk, the Hyperloop, and its ties with American private equity firms like Apollo Global Management, Blackstone Group and TPG Capital.
TODAY: Andreessen Horowitz Ditches Miami Two Years After Opening Office
In partisan circles, there’s constant debate about the legitimacy of the Russia investigation, often dismissed as a 'hoax.' But the real question is, who stands to benefit from a potential second American Civil War? If history is any indication, it’s the opportunists and bandits who profit from societal collapse—just as they did during the fall of the Soviet Union."