Sean ‘Diddy‘ Combs used a baseball bat to coerce his former righthand man and co-founder of his record label into signing over his shares of the company in an alleged scheme to give his mother total ownership, according to a shocking new lawsuit.
Bad Boy Entertainment co-founder and ex-president Kirk Burrowes, 62, claims he was forced to give up his 25 percent stake in the label to Diddy during a violent confrontation in 1996, DailyMail.com can reveal.
The music mogul, 55, allegedly subsequently transferred the shares to his mother Janice Smalls, 84, who had co-founded BBE with Burrowes four years earlier.
In new legal filings obtained by DailyMail.com, the ousted music executive, who had also served as the company’s chief operating officer and general manager, says he’s homeless and has had to endure ‘prolonged periods of living in shelters across New York City‘ due to the ‘immense’ financial hardship as a result.
Burrowes is now suing Smalls, the label’s majority stakeholder and who he alleges ‘engaged in a decades-long scheme of intimidation, violence, fraudulent misrepresentation, and financial concealment.’
According to the lawsuit, the altercation took place in May 1996 when Diddy, wielding a baseball bat, entered Burrowes’s New York City office with BBE attorney Kenneth Meiselas.
‘By words and actions, Sean Combs and Kenneth Meiselas frightened and intimidated and assaulted plaintiff (Burrowes) and forced him to turn over his share certificate for 25 shares of Bad Boy Entertainment to Sean Combs,’ the lawsuit filed in federal court in New York Wednesday states.
‘Plaintiff, fearing for his life, with tears streaming down his face clearly unable to resist under the circumstances, involuntarily signed the documents.’
Smalls was not in the office the day of the alleged assault, which the filing notes was unusual.
When Burrowes contacted Smalls after the incident ‘seeking guidance’, she ‘pretended she was unaware’ of what Combs and Meiselas had allegedly done, the papers state.
Though Smalls wasn’t physically present at the time of the altercation, Burrowes claims Diddy and Meiselas ‘were acting under [her] direction’…’to orchestrate the fraudulent involuntary transfer’.
The lawsuit goes on to claim that the ‘Defendants not only defrauded [Burrowes] of his rightful stake in BBE but also systematically sabotaged his career.’
‘They blacklisted him from the music industry, blocked business opportunities, and destroyed his professional reputation, ensuring he would remain financially destitute and unable to reclaim what was rightfully his,’ the documents state.
Burrowes says he is owed millions in lost profits, claiming he invested $100,000 of his own money when Bad Boy Entertainment first launched.
He’s seeking damages for financial losses, reinstatement of his 25 percent ownership stake, his 15 percent annual share including interest, and a forensic audit of Bad Boy Entertainment’s earnings and profits from its inception to the present.
The explosive lawsuit adds to the mounting legal woes Diddy faces as he awaits trial on charges of racketeering, sex trafficking, and transportation for prostitution, behind bars at the grim Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.
The disgraced rapper-producer has repeatedly been denied bail since he was arrested and taken into custody in September.
Burrowes developed a close personal and business relationship with Combs’ family after the two met in the early 1990s, according to the filing.