Diddy Adds Sam Bankman-Fried Litigator to Growing Defense Team

Sean “Diddy” Combs is getting some additional legal firepower to fight the federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges filed against him last month.

Alexandra Shapiro, a co-founder of litigation boutique Shapiro Arato Bach, and longtime New York trial lawyer Anthony “Tony” Ricco have joined Combs’ criminal defense team, said a source briefed on the outside counsel roster.

That team is led by Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos, founding partners of Agnifilo Intrater. Geragos’ father is Mark Geragos, a celebrity litigator from Los Angeles who has previously advised Combs on other matters.

Shapiro, a former clerk for late US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who was also once a partner at Latham & Watkins, earlier this year was retained as appellate counsel to disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence for fraud.

Combs is being housed in same Brooklyn jail as Sam Bankman-Fried, the New York Times reported.

Shapiro started her law firm in 2009 with former Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Cynthia Arato, who has handled legal work for rapper-turned-entrepreneur Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter’s Roc Nation.

Shapiro Arato Bach expanded its nameplate in 2019 when Shapiro’s husband, Jonathan Bach, a former head of Cooley’s New York office, joined the firm. Shapiro, who is also an author of legal fiction, has been involved in notable insider trading cases, some of which have reached the Supreme Court.

Ricco, who entered his appearance in the Combs criminal case Monday, hails from New York City’s Harlem neighborhood—whose name Diddy’s Bad Boy Records label used when releasing a breakthrough album for the rapper Mase in 1997—and over the years has represented a coterie of defendants in high-profile cases ranging from police shootings to cases involving drug dealers, corrupt politicians, crooked lawyers, and convicted terrorists.

Combs has also assembled a civil litigation team led by Michael Tremonte and Erica Wolff of New York-based boutique Sher Tremonte and solo practitioner Jonathan Davis to represent him in disputes related to his alleged personal misconduct, according to court filings and a source familiar with the matter. Davis has been a legal adviser to Combs for decades.

Aaron Dyer, a former federal prosecutor and co-leader of the corporate investigations and white-collar defense practice at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, counseled Combs earlier this year amid a raid by federal agents on the hip-hop star’s homes in Los Angeles and Miami. At the time, Dyer called the search a “gross use of military-level force,” but he and Pillsbury Winthrop didn’t respond to comment requests about whether Combs remains a client.