Diddy could be walking away with $100 million from a lawsuit against a man who never even bothered to fight back in court.
Here’s what happened. A guy named Courtney Burgess went on a TV show called NewsNation back in 2024 and made some very big claims. He said he had 11 flash drives with videos of Diddy doing bad things with famous people, and he said some of those people in the videos were kids. Diddy’s team said those videos don’t exist and that Burgess made the whole thing up to get famous and make money. So Diddy sued him for $100 million, saying Burgess lied and it hurt his reputation badly.
The lawsuit also named Burgess’s lawyer, Ariel Mitchell, and the company that owns NewsNation, called Nexstar Media Inc. Combs’ legal team called the whole thing a “willful scheme to fabricate and broadcast outrageous lies,” saying the defendants used those fake claims “to gain social media fame, enrich themselves, and strip Mr. Combs of his reputation and livelihood.”
When you get sued, you have to respond by a certain deadline, or you automatically lose your chance to defend yourself. Burgess’s deadline was February 2, 2026, and he didn’t respond. That wasn’t even close to an accident because Diddy’s lawyers served him in every way the law allows: email, certified mail, text messages and even newspaper ads published over a dozen different days in December 2025 and January 2026. On April 30, 2026, the federal court officially recorded Burgess’s failure to respond, according to Digital Music News, which is called a default. That’s basically the court saying: you were told, you didn’t show up, and now it’s on the record.
A default doesn’t mean Diddy gets a check in the mail tomorrow, but it’s a huge first step. The next move is asking the judge to turn that default into an actual money judgment, which could mean Burgess ends up owing Combs the full $100 million. Mitchell separately asked the court to dismiss the case against her, arguing her statements weren’t lies, so that part of the lawsuit is still being fought. Combs is currently serving a 50-month sentence at FCI Fort Dix in New Jersey while all of this plays out in court.
Combs’ lawyers are expected to file a formal motion for a default judgment against Burgess in the coming weeks.