Strange Cellmates in a Brooklyn Jail: Sean Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried

Sean Combs lives in the same unit of a Brooklyn jail as Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto magnate convicted of fraud. According to a source, he sleeps in a dorm room with a group of other suspects who are assigned to the same unit.

Mr. Combs has been held in the Metropolitan Detention Center for nearly a week since federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging him with racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking in what the government calls a “decades-long pattern of physical and sexual violence.”

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and his lawyers have been pushing hard for him to be released on bail. They asked a judge to set a $50 million bond and hire a security team to watch him at all times. The judge rejected the motion, saying he was concerned about Mr. Combs’s attempted tampering, which would have placed him in a special housing unit often used by high-profile inmates.

A Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman said the agency “does not provide information about conditions of confinement, including housing assignments or internal security practices for a specific inmate.”

Mr Bankman-Fried has been in the prison, known as MDC, since last year when his bail was revoked after a judge ruled he had breached the terms of his release. In the run-up to his trial last year, his lawyers complained that he had only sporadic access to the internet and was unable to properly prepare for his case. They said Mr Bankman-Fried, a vegan, was surviving on a diet of water, bread and peanut butter.

Mr. Bankman-Fried, who founded the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, was convicted of orchestrating a massive fraud that saw him funnel billions of dollars of his customers’ money into venture capital investments, political contributions and other lavish spending. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

But after his conviction, Mr. Bankman-Fried asked to remain in MDC while he appealed. He has overlapped in the unit with other prominent inmates, including a former president of Honduras and Mexico’s former secretary of public security.

Mr. Combs’ lawyers initially argued that conditions at MDC were too “horrible” for a defendant awaiting trial. The prison, a sprawling concrete structure housing about 1,200 inmates, has a long history of complaints. A lawyer for an inmate who died there in July from injuries sustained in a fight called it “an overcrowded, understaffed, neglected federal prison that is hell on earth.” In 2019, an electrical fire left some inmates without heat in the dead of winter.

But on Tuesday, an attorney for Mr. Combs, Marc Agnifilo, who declined to comment on his client’s roommates, spoke much more positively about the detention center. He said the “dedicated professionals at the MDC are doing everything they can to help him and his attorneys prepare his defense, and I thank them personally.”

“He is strong, focused and our meetings are very productive,” Mr. Agnifilo said in a statement. “I cannot say enough good things about the MDC, which has been responsive to our needs and his.”

Mr. Combs’ defense is pushing for a speedy trial, and Mr. Agnifilo said his team was working to ensure that Mr. Combs could review the government’s discovery while he was in custody “as quickly as humanly possible.” The government has said the case involved a “tremendous amount” of evidence, including numerous witnesses, photographs, videos and text messages.

“I believe that if the government wants to arrest him and keep him in jail, despite a huge bail amount and despite his repeated offers to turn himself in, we all need to do this with unprecedented urgency,” Mr Agnifilo said.

In a letter to the judge hearing the case on Monday, Mr. Combs’ lawyers said they did not plan at that time to request that Mr. Combs be transferred to another detention center.

The Bureau of Prisons said it has made efforts in recent months to improve conditions there, including hiring more permanent staff and addressing more than 700 overdue maintenance requests.

William K. Rashbaum contributed to the reporting.