Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith

Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith (also recorded in Michigan court and corrections records as Derrick Lee Smith, Derrick L. Smith, and Derrick L. Moore; Michigan Department of Corrections number 267009) is a Michigan state prisoner serving sentences for multiple first- and third-degree Criminal Sexual Conduct convictions and a Kidnapping conviction. Since 2024 he has also become nationally known as a prolific pro se litigant against Sean "Diddy" Combs — most notably for briefly winning a $100 million default judgment against Combs in a Michigan circuit court, a judgment vacated within weeks on service-of-process grounds. In the two years since, federal courts in the Eastern District of Michigan have formally designated him an "ENJOINED FILER," barred him from filing further documents without advance leave of court, and documented a pattern the presiding judge described as "duplicative, fabricated, harassing, and unnecessary" filings — including affidavits the court found to be forged, some purportedly signed by his own alleged victims.

Criminal History

Court docket records show at least four separate Michigan circuit-court felony case numbers associated with this individual, filed under two different names, spanning 1997 to 2008:

• 97-010147-01-FH — filed under "Smith, Derrick Lee" / "Smith, Derrick L."
• 98-004133-01-FH — filed under the name "Moore, Derrick L."
• 08-008639-01-FC — filed under "Smith, Derrick Lee" / "Smith, Derrick L."
• 19-000756-01-FC — filed under "Smith, Derrick Lee" / "Smith, Derrick L."

All four cases involve Criminal Sexual Conduct (first- and third-degree) and Kidnapping charges, and each resulted in a conviction or plea — predominantly nolo contendere — followed by a Michigan Department of Corrections sentence. This is consistent with, and corroborated by, secondary reporting: Cardello-Smith was convicted in Wayne County Circuit Court in 1998 of two counts of third-degree Criminal Sexual Conduct, and convicted again in Wayne County Circuit Court in 2008 of six counts of first-degree Criminal Sexual Conduct and two counts of Kidnapping. He has been denied federal habeas relief on the 1998 convictions on the merits, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has denied him permission to file a successive habeas petition challenging that conviction on at least four separate occasions. The use of the surname "Moore" on the 1998 case docket is the documentary basis for treating "Derrick L. Moore" as a confirmed alias.

Litigation Against Sean Combs

Notably, none of the four Michigan criminal case dockets — spanning Cardello-Smith's original 1997 arrest through decades of subsequent appeals and post-conviction motions continuing into 2026 — contain any reference to Sean Combs. Nor do his earliest civil-rights suits, filed beginning in February 2022 against the Michigan Department of Corrections and other prison-system defendants (see "Other Litigation" below). Cardello-Smith's first public mention of Combs came in his June 10, 2024 Lenawee County filing, roughly seven months after Cassie Ventura's November 2023 lawsuit made Combs the subject of nationwide sexual-assault litigation.

Cardello-Smith filed his first civil suit against Combs on June 10, 2024, in the 39th Circuit Court for Lenawee County, Michigan (case no. 2024-0000247362-NO), alleging that Combs sexually assaulted him at an after-party at a Detroit Holiday Inn in June 1997, where Cardello-Smith says he was working as a bartender. Combs did not appear or respond. At an August 7, 2024 hearing, Cardello-Smith testified that Combs had visited him in prison once and separately sent a financial advisor to offer him $2.3 million to drop the suit, which he said he refused. On or about September 9, 2024, the court entered a default judgment against Combs for $100 million.

Cardello-Smith's claim did not emerge in a vacuum. Sean Combs has documented, unrelated connections to Michigan from around the same era that gave his account surface plausibility and helped sustain public and media interest before deeper scrutiny caught up with it. Combs's first headlining tour, in support of his debut album "No Way Out," kicked off at The Palace of Auburn Hills — a Detroit suburb — on November 9, 1997. Separately, Detroit radio host Roger Mills sued Combs in Wayne County Circuit Court in March 2001, alleging he and his crew were assaulted and a tape confiscated after Mills asked Combs about rumors tying him to the Notorious B.I.G.'s death during an August 1999 interview; a jury ultimately ruled for Combs in 2004. And one of the plaintiffs in the broader post-Ventura wave of litigation against Combs, Anna Kane (Kane v. Combs, No. 1:23-cv-10628, S.D.N.Y.), alleges an assault that began when she was a Detroit-area teenager in 2003. None of this corroborates or connects to Cardello-Smith's specific 1997 allegation — different people, different years, different claims — but it meant Combs already had a real, documented Michigan footprint by the time Cardello-Smith came forward in mid-2024, which plausibly helped his account get taken seriously before the pattern of fabrication described below came to light.

The judgment did not last. On September 18, 2024, the same court vacated it after Combs' attorney, David Fink, argued that Cardello-Smith had never properly served Combs under Michigan law — the same defect that later became the basis for removing the case to federal court. Two Lenawee County court proceedings from this period were captured on video and are cited here as primary-source references even though this profile did not transcribe them directly: a hearing in which the judge tells Cardello-Smith to file for default judgment, and news coverage of the judgment itself.

On October 7, 2024, Combs removed the case to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan (case no. 5:24-cv-12647, assigned to Judge Judith E. Levy), formally arguing that because Cardello-Smith had never properly served him, the 30-day removal clock had never started. On November 15, 2024, Judge Levy denied Cardello-Smith's motions to remand the case back to state court, agreeing that service had been defective. In the interim, on October 22, 2024, Cardello-Smith filed a formal notice with the court stating he was seeking $400 million in damages against Combs for "Monetary, Punitive, Compensatory Damages" — nearly quadruple the $100 million default judgment already vacated a month earlier.

From there, the case — and Cardello-Smith's surrounding conduct — deteriorated into what the court itself would come to characterize as a pattern of vexatious litigation:

• In late 2024, Cardello-Smith named singer and actress Jennifer Lopez as a purported witness to the alleged 1997 incident; that filing was dismissed.
• In a filing dated on or about January 2, 2025, Combs' legal team told the court that a motion by Cardello-Smith relied on "an obvious fabrication — a forged 'note' supposedly written by the Lenawee County Circuit Court clerk."
• In January 2025, Judge Levy issued an opinion (2025 WL 269167) warning Cardello-Smith that his litigation conduct — including affidavits the court found to be fabricated, "purportedly from the victims of his crimes" — might warrant formal pre-filing restrictions.
• In March 2025, Cardello-Smith filed multiple affidavits in federal court purporting to be sworn statements from Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy and Assistant Prosecutor Suzette Samuels, alleging that Worthy had orchestrated a conspiracy with Combs, that a since-retired Detroit police officer, Nicole Rabior, had been paid $132,000 to file false reports, and that Samuels had been coerced into covering up an alleged rape. The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office called the affidavits "patently fraudulent." A forensic document examiner retained in connection with the matter, Erich Speckin, found that signatures had been "copied from other documents and then pasted on new ones" and that notary signatures were forged; Officer Rabior stated on the record, "This isn't my signature at all." The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office confirmed it opened a criminal investigation into Cardello-Smith over the affidavits; a former federal prosecutor interviewed on the matter suggested potential mail fraud, wire fraud, and false-statement charges.
• On June 30, 2025, Judge Levy formally enjoined Cardello-Smith from filing any further documents in case 5:24-cv-12647 without first obtaining leave of court (2025 WL 1951722), citing his continued filing of "duplicative, fabricated, harassing, and unnecessary documents," including frivolous or barred lawsuits, duplicative frivolous motions, and fabricated affidavits.

That June 2025 order became the template for how the Eastern District of Michigan has handled Cardello-Smith since: his name now appears on the court's own docket captions as "Cardello-Smith [ENJOINED FILER]." On August 8, 2025, a second judge, Stephen J. Murphy III, extended equivalent pre-filing restrictions in a separate defamation suit Cardello-Smith brought against USA Today (see "Other Litigation" below), citing three duplicate motions to disqualify the judge and duplicate motions for the clerk to issue summons. Under both orders, Cardello-Smith must now file a "Motion Pursuant to Court Order Seeking Leave to File" for anything he wants docketed, attaching the proposed document, a copy of the restricting order, a sworn declaration that the filing is not frivolous or duplicative, and a full list of every suit he has filed against every defendant named.

Separately, in a November 18, 2024 opinion dismissing another of his Combs suits (case no. 2:24-cv-12737) for failure to pay the filing fee, Judge Brandy R. McMillion held that the Prison Litigation Reform Act's "three-strikes" rule barred Cardello-Smith from proceeding in forma pauperis, because he had already had at least seven civil rights complaints dismissed as frivolous, malicious, or for failure to state a claim, dating back to 2009 (see "Other Litigation" below for the specific citations).

None of this has stopped the filing pace. As of this writing, Cardello-Smith has brought at least eight additional Combs-captioned or Combs-adjacent federal actions beyond the original Lenawee suit and its removal: two in the Southern District of New York (1:24-cv-08738 and 1:25-cv-09743), one in the Southern District of Florida (1:25-cv-22875, filed June 2025), one in the Eastern District of New York (1:26-cv-02360, filed April 2026 and dismissed without prejudice eight days later, again under the three-strikes rule, with in forma pauperis status denied), a Sixth Circuit appeal (25-1245, filed March 2025), and two additional Eastern District of Michigan habeas petitions naming Combs among the respondents (2:25-cv-11802, filed June 2025, later transferred to the Sixth Circuit, and 5:25-cv-12198, filed July 2025). One document filed in a further Eastern District of Michigan case, 2:25-cv-11958, was saved locally under the original filename "... - fake transcript.pdf" — its authenticity has not been independently verified and is flagged here as an open question warranting further review, not a confirmed finding.

Cardello-Smith's related criminal appellate history also continued into 2025 and 2026, running on a separate track from the Combs litigation — it arises from his own underlying convictions, not from Combs. On November 5, 2025, he filed a delayed application for leave to appeal with the Michigan Court of Appeals (case no. 378175), challenging Wayne Circuit Court orders in his own criminal cases 19-000756-01-FC and 08-008639-01-FC — the same convictions listed under Criminal History above — along with motions for bond pending appeal and to waive fees. On December 4, 2025, a three-judge panel (Murray, Garrett, Feeney) denied the application for leave to appeal and denied bond, while granting the fee waiver. Cardello-Smith then filed two motions to disqualify the panel's presiding judge, Christopher M. Murray; both were denied, the second (December 17, 2025) for lack of merit. He moved for reconsideration and to strike the December 4 order; on January 7, 2026, the same panel denied both and assessed $1,000 in costs against him. He sought further review at the Michigan Supreme Court twice: a first application (MSC No. 169433, filed December 17, 2025) was dismissed as erroneously docketed on December 26, 2025; a second application (MSC No. 169689, filed February 18, 2026, along with motions to remand to the trial court and for bail) remained pending as of the most recent docket entry available, an April 29, 2026 court letter rejecting a motion to grant based on the prosecution's failure to file an answer and noting that default judgment is not available at the Michigan Supreme Court.

Other Litigation

The Combs litigation sits inside a much longer pattern. Judge McMillion's November 2024 opinion in case 2:24-cv-12737 lists the following prior federal civil rights actions as having been dismissed as frivolous, malicious, or for failure to state a claim, or as having had in forma pauperis status denied on three-strikes grounds — the earliest reaching back sixteen years before the first Combs suit:

• Smith v. Wayne Cnty. Prosecutor's Office, et al., No. 2:09-cv-12287 (E.D. Mich. June 25, 2009)
• Smith v. Lemaire, No. 1:14-cv-644, 2015 WL 6133144 (W.D. Mich. Oct. 16, 2015)
• Smith v. Hall et al., No. 1:18-cv-277, 2018 WL 1602633 (W.D. Mich. Apr. 3, 2018)
• Smith v. Penman, No. 18-1212, 2018 WL 6697270 (W.D. Mich. Dec. 20, 2018) — IFP denied as a three-striker
• Smith, et al. v. Unis, et al., No. 2:19-cv-12219, 2019 WL 3958394 (E.D. Mich. Aug. 22, 2019)
• Smith v. Writeaprisoner.com, Inc., No. 20-1201, 2021 WL 210716 (W.D. Mich. Jan. 21, 2021) — IFP denied as a three-striker
• Smith v. Washington, No. 20-1211, 2021 WL 302614 (W.D. Mich. Jan. 29, 2021) — IFP denied as a three-striker
• Smith v. Penman, et al., No. 2:20-cv-12052, 2021 WL 634733 (E.D. Mich. Feb. 18, 2021)
• North v. Scanlon, No. 1:21-cv-518, 2021 WL 2934834 (W.D. Mich. July 13, 2021)
• Smith v. Google, No. 2:21-cv-11489, 2021 WL 3164282 (E.D. Mich. July 27, 2021)

Beyond that list, this profile independently confirmed and added the following distinct case records, largely concentrated in two categories: prison-conditions/civil-rights suits against Michigan corrections officials and vendors, and a cluster of newer suits that fit the same vexatious-filing pattern the court has since formally sanctioned:

• Prison rights / MDOC litigation: Cardello-Smith v. Michigan Department of Corrections, No. 2:22-cv-10520 (E.D. Mich., filed March 2022); a related Sixth Circuit appeal, No. 22-1657; Cardello-Smith v. JPay, LLC, No. 2:22-cv-10340 (E.D. Mich., filed February 2022), a dispute with the prison email/tablet vendor naming MDOC mailroom and contract staff alongside JPay; Cardello-Smith v. 83 County Prosecutor's Offices, No. 2:22-cv-12377 (E.D. Mich., filed October 2022), a habeas petition naming the prosecutor's office, magistrate judges, and chief circuit judges of all 83 Michigan counties as respondents; and a second, more recent Cardello-Smith v. Michigan Department of Corrections, No. 5:26-cv-11643 (E.D. Mich., filed May 2026), captioned by the court as an ENJOINED FILER matter.
• Michigan Court of Claims: Cardello-Smith v. Langschwager and Nessel, No. 24-000039-MZ — a dispute over a typewriter allegedly confiscated from him in MDOC custody, naming Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel as a defendant. The Court of Claims denied both his motion for sanctions and his motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, finding MDOC was not a proper party to the suit and that he had cited no supporting legal authority.
• Media and vexatious-pattern suits: Cardello-Smith v. USA Today, No. 2:25-cv-11737 (E.D. Mich., filed June 2025) — a defamation suit against USA Today, its parent company Gannett Co., and reporters Gina Barton, Kriston Roberts, and Caren Bohan over coverage of the Combs litigation, which produced the August 2025 enjoinment order discussed above; and two nearly identical habeas-adjacent suits filed roughly a week apart, Cardello-Smith v. Probable Cause Conference Directors, Nos. 5:25-cv-12504 (Aug. 12, 2025) and 5:25-cv-12569 (Aug. 19, 2025).

Independent reporters have also examined Cardello-Smith's broader pattern of claims and filings, though their work is characterization and investigation rather than adjudicated fact, and is presented here as attributed reporting rather than neutral findings. Independent journalist Michael Volpe, who hosts the podcast and newsletter Suing Diddy, initially covered Cardello-Smith's allegations and later reported that his own investigation found the story did not hold up: a document Cardello-Smith described as a police report was, in Volpe's assessment, "more a memo"; the Detroit Police Department had no record of any investigation; and a claim that Kym Worthy held a financial interest in Bad Boy Records had no supporting evidence. Volpe describes Cardello-Smith as "a master manipulator." Separately, a Medium contributor writing as Paula Kensu published a detailed critical piece in October 2025 alleging that Cardello-Smith fabricated a document labeled "Exhibit A," purporting to show a retaliatory prison transfer, which did not match the real transfer order later obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request; Kensu's piece also states that the court has stricken nearly 30 of Cardello-Smith's filings for containing forged signatures and fabricated affidavits, a claim broadly consistent with the CBS News investigation and the federal court's own enjoinment orders described above. An earlier Kensu piece on the same subject, "The Probable Cause Conspiracy in Michigan," could not be retrieved (the link returned an HTTP 410 Gone error) and its contents are not represented here.

A prison pen-pal listing under the name "Derrick Lee Smith," MDOC number 267009, appears on the inmate correspondence site WriteAPrisoner.com, describing him — per search-indexed content — as the "Guy Suing P. Diddy" and seeking correspondence; the profile's URL and MDOC number are consistent with his confirmed identity. No separate, independently verifiable "convict finder" listing beyond Michigan's own official OTIS offender-lookup system was located.

Sources

• CBS News Detroit, "Detroit authorities deny inmate's claim they conspired against him on behalf of Sean 'Diddy' Combs" — cbsnews.com
• BBC News, coverage of the fabricated affidavits and forensic document analysis — bbc.com
• Newsweek, "Sean 'Diddy' Combs accuser used 'forged note' as evidence, lawyer says" — newsweek.com
• Michigan Courts case search, full docket, People of Michigan v. Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith, Court of Appeals No. 378175 / Michigan Supreme Court Nos. 169433, 169689 (docket entries through Apr. 29, 2026; primary source, on file)
• Justia, Michigan Court of Appeals order, People of Michigan v. Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith, docket 378175 (Dec. 10, 2025) — law.justia.com
• U.S. District Court, E.D. Mich., Notice of Damages Sought ($400 million), Cardello-Smith v. Combs, No. 5:24-cv-12647, ECF No. 15, PageID.641 (filed Oct. 22, 2024; primary source, on file)
• U.S. District Court, E.D. Mich., Order Enjoining Filer, Cardello-Smith v. USA Today, No. 2:25-cv-11737, ECF No. 27 (Aug. 8, 2025) — govinfo.gov
• U.S. District Court, E.D. Mich., Opinion and Order Dismissing Case Without Prejudice, Cardello-Smith v. Combs, et al., No. 2:24-cv-12737, ECF No. 9 (Nov. 18, 2024) — govinfo.gov
• U.S. District Court, E.D. Mich., Opinion and Order Denying Plaintiff's Motions to Remand, Cardello-Smith v. Combs, No. 5:24-cv-12647, ECF No. 35 (Nov. 15, 2024) — law.justia.com
• Michigan Court of Claims, Opinion and Order Denying Plaintiff's Motions, Cardello-Smith v. Langschwager and Nessel, No. 24-000039-MZ — courts.michigan.gov
• CourtListener / PACER RECAP, docket search and party records for Cardello-Smith litigation across E.D. Mich., S.D.N.Y., E.D.N.Y., S.D. Fla., and the Sixth Circuit — courtlistener.com
• Michael Volpe, "Derrick Smith is Back," Suing Diddy newsletter — michaelvolpe.substack.com
• Paula Kensu, "The 'Probable Cause' Scam: Exposing Derrick Lee Cardello Smith's Fabricated Filings and False Promises," Medium (Oct. 18, 2025) — medium.com
• WriteAPrisoner.com, inmate pen-pal profile, Derrick Lee Smith #267009 — writeaprisoner.com
• Michigan Department of Corrections, Offender Tracking Information System (OTIS) — mdocweb.state.mi.us
• Lenawee County court proceedings (video), judge instructs Cardello-Smith to file for default judgment — youtube.com
• Lenawee County court proceedings (video), news coverage of the $100 million default judgment — youtube.com
• AOL / TMZ / The Root, contemporaneous coverage of the September 2024 default judgment and its reversal (aggregated via search)
• Michigan circuit court criminal docket records for case nos. 97-010147-01-FH, 98-004133-01-FH, 08-008639-01-FC, and 19-000756-01-FC (primary source, on file)
• Billboard, "Detroit-Area Man Sues Puff Daddy" — billboard.com
• Justia, Michigan Court of Appeals unpublished opinion, Roger Mills v. Sean Combs, No. 254532 (Aug. 25, 2005) — law.justia.com
• Concert Archives, Puff Daddy / Puff Daddy & The Family tour history, Nov. 9, 1997 date at The Palace of Auburn Hills — concertarchives.org