‘Thank you for calling the Sean P Diddy Combs abuse helpline. This call is being recorded.’
This is the first thing that up to 40 people a week are hearing when they ring the Montana-based call center fielding legal complaints from alleged victims of the embattled music mogul.
‘We understand the strength and courage it takes to come forward,’ the message continues. ‘Any information you provide will be kept completely confidential, but we expect full honesty in order to properly assist you with your potential case.’
Andrew Van Arsdale, CEO of Reciprocity Industries, which runs the hotline, told the Daily Mail that the volume of calls has surged since the start of Diddy’s sex trafficking, racketeering, and assault trial in New York.
‘As it’s been front and center with the criminal trial ongoing, I think a lot of the folks that contacted us early on, and maybe weren’t quite ready to move forward, are contacting us again,’ Van Arsdale said.
‘And even new people, who may be seeing this and maybe realizing that they truly weren’t alone in what they experienced, are calling in.’
Reciprocity, which Van Arsdale, 43, started with his lifelong friend and fellow Montanan Tyler Cross, describes itself on its website as a ‘software development company with specialist expertise in legal and television advertising and call center services’.
Its team scours daily news headlines and court filings as well as the FDA adverse events report website for major cases that could yield numerous victims – then sets about rooting out those potential plaintiffs for civil cases.
Previously, they took on one involving 11,000 victims alleging abuse by the Boy Scouts. The organization filed for bankruptcy in 2020 amid a nearly $1.5 billion payout to claimants.
Employees are looking for ‘a pattern or a number of alarming details coming up,’ Van Arsdale said.
‘If it happened to one person, it probably happened to a few… maybe somebody didn’t do their job as well as they should have done.’
The initial Diddy lawsuit easily fell within that category, piquing Van Arsdale’s immediate interest when Combs settled in 2023 with ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura within a day of her filing an incendiary civil suit.
Reciprocity began seeking more alleged victims when the federal criminal proceedings against the star were still a distant dream. Combs has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The company records and vets complaints from potential plaintiffs, passing them on to either Van Arsdale’s own AVA Law Group or hundreds of other law firm clients around the country.
To find those plaintiffs, Reciprocity utilizes a variety of means to advertise, from social media to plastering its call center phone number on a billboard at an October Diddy press conference.
One of their most prominent partners in the Combs case is Texas attorney Tony Buzbee, who stood defiantly in front of the 1-800 number during the televised conference.
‘That just opened up just a ton of phone calls that maybe would [otherwise] have been form submissions on Instagram,’ Van Arsdale told the Daily Mail.
Such advertising by Reciprocity and other legal companies, however, has been criticized by some as encouraging false reports and potentially overwhelming courts.
Following Buzbee’s October press conference promoting the hotline, Combs’s lawyers complained of ‘clear attempts to garner publicity’.
But the work at Reciprocity – where employees take calls 24/7 across three shifts – is not for the faint of heart.
‘We have on-site counsellors that come into the office periodically and work with our staff,’ Van Arsdale said, noting that the company operated in fairly small teams of eight to ten workers with a direct supervisor.
‘As they’re feeling a little bit of the secondary trauma that comes with hearing these kinds of stories… we make sure that we build in a lot of time they need to kind of get away from it, do some breathing exercises or walk around the block, or whatever it may be, to re-center themselves to deal with such difficult content matter.’
While he conceded that ‘the allegations are very heinous in terms of what Sean Combs is alleged to have done’, he added that ‘it’s tough to shock us at this point… because we’ve just heard so many tragic narratives’.
The company, based in Billings, Montana, has also faced threats for its work. Van Arsdale recalled a bomb scare during the Boy Scouts litigation.
‘It kind of comes with the territory,’ he said. ‘People don’t like it when we mess with their beloved institutions. They don’t like it when we mess with their cultural heroes.’
In the case of Combs, the mogul is not only accused of orchestrating violence but also clearly retains a loyal fanbase of supporters.
So far, there have been no threats directly linked to the Combs case that Van Arsdale could immediately recall but he conceded that the worry was always there. ‘Luckily, I move around a lot.
‘I’m traveling constantly for work, so I think that’s maybe a benefit. But… it is a concern that I carry.’
Combs’s isn’t the only high-profile case currently among Reciprocity’s files.
‘The call center is also taking reports from accusers of brothers Oren, Alon and Tal Alexander – real estate moguls who, as with Combs, face charges of sex trafficking alongside multiple sexual assault civil suits. The Alexanders have also pleaded not guilty.
‘Early on, we were probably getting 20 to 30 calls a week’ regarding the Alexanders, Van Arsdale said.
‘When we filed a number of lawsuits in New York, we had another pretty big spike in phone calls in terms of folks reaching out to us and explaining what their experience was with the Alexander brothers. It has really tapered off, though – maybe one to two calls a week over the past six to eight weeks.’
He acknowledged that it was a bit surreal for an unassuming call center in Montana to be listening to allegations regarding some of the biggest – and most infamous – names on the planet.
But Van Arsdale believed there was local pride, not just among his employees but throughout the state, in the work Reciprocity was taking on.
‘It’s a very rewarding job in giving [victims] that hand up and getting them started on this path – and especially when the whole case comes to fruition, like we saw in Boy Scouts,’ he said.
‘The same person that you talked to five years ago that is telling their story and bawling their eyes out… now has reached the pinnacle of the system.
‘And there’s never enough money to compensate for what was taken from them. But they stood up. They got accountability. They got some sense of justice and got their power back.
‘Our team gets to hold their hand through that whole journey, which is just amazing.’