Four men who were housed in Sean Combs’ unit told NBC News he pays fellow inmates to cook, clean and give him massages, drinks smuggled liquor on weekends and uses an illicit phone and tablet. His spokesperson says the media is treating ordinary prison life as news.
Sean "Diddy" Combs is serving a 50-month federal sentence, but according to men who lived alongside him, his time at FCI Fort Dix in New Jersey looks less like punishment and more like a staffed apartment.
Four former unit-mates, all speaking to NBC News anonymously, said the 56-year-old music mogul spends thousands of dollars a month to keep up his comforts at the low-security prison. "This is some rich s–t," one of them told the network.
Cooks, cleaners and a masseur
According to the men, other inmates make Combs’ bed, wash his laundry and scrub the shower and toilet area before he uses it. One gives him regular Chinese-style massages. Others cook for him using a homemade heating element dropped into water, turning out curry chicken, pizza and empanadas. One former cook said he eventually got tired of the job and that Combs "started going to the Jamaicans."
The helpers are paid through their commissary accounts, the sources said, with money sent in by people on the outside.
Some inmates simply hold on to things for him, including his phone and a volume of fan mail one source said he has no room to store.
Phones, a tablet and weekend Hennessy
The sources said Combs uses contraband cellphones to browse Instagram and look at explicit photos sent by a former girlfriend. He also has a "jailbroken" tablet for movies and documentaries. Two of the men said that has included "Sean Combs: The Reckoning," the Netflix series produced by his longtime rival 50 Cent.
On weekends, the men said, he shares premium liquor that guards smuggle in with a small circle of inmates. "Hell yeah, I drank with him," one said of drinking Hennessy together. They also said he has paid for other prisoners’ prescriptions of the antidepressant Remeron, which is traded on the prison black market.
"You can pretty much get anything except a key to the front door and a female," one man said.
Rehab, solitary and a new release date
Combs was convicted in July 2025 on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. He was acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. His lawyers pushed for him to serve his time at Fort Dix because of its drug treatment program, which can shorten a sentence.
He entered the program on arrival. But the sources said he had a phone and alcohol almost immediately. "Pretty much the day he arrived, the party started," one told NBC. After a fight with another inmate in July, Combs was sent to solitary and later removed from the program, the men said, and he went back to the same routine once he was released from isolation.
"Money is power, especially behind bars," one source said. Combs was once estimated to be a billionaire, but his fortune is now thought to be somewhere between $300 million and $400 million.
A spokesperson for Combs dismissed the report, saying the scrutiny has reached the point where "ordinary prison life" is treated as news, and that Combs is serving his sentence while awaiting a decision on his appeal.
Federal Bureau of Prisons records reviewed by Page Six now list his release date as Jan. 21, 2028, earlier than the June 2028 date originally set. TMZ was first to report the change.
Reporting in this story is based on reporting by NBC News, as summarized by the New York Post, and on records reported by Page Six and TMZ. The claims come from anonymous former inmates and have not been independently verified. The image is an illustration, not a photograph of FCI Fort Dix.
