Coronation Street fans are convinced Cassie Plummer and Becky Swain are linked in some way, and now a scene on the ITV soap featuring a phone call has added fuel to the theory
22:41, 05 Nov 2025Updated 22:42, 05 Nov 2025
Fans think there’s a secret link between two Coronation Street characters(Image: ITV)
Fans think there’s a secret link between two Coronation Street characters, and the latest episode may have ‘confirmed’ this.
Cassie Plummer spoke about helping someone with business in Spain, before speaking in Spanish on the phone. With fans already suspecting prior to this that Cassie could be somehow linked to villain Becky Swain, this scene left fans wondering if it was a given now.
After all, Becky returned from the dead months ago and it was revealed for the past four years, she has been hiding out in Spain. She’s now being told she has to return there to stop her cover being blown, with Becky wanting daughter Betsy to go with her, as well as her ex Lisa Swain.
All the sudden talk about Spain, and a scene last week that involved both Cassie and Becky, has sparked a theory that they secretly know each other. So when Cassie spoke in Spanish and revealed all about her link to the country, fans wondered if this was proof that she and Becky know each other, and that Cassie knows all about her dodgy dealings.
Taking to social media, one fan said: “Cassie speaking Spanish and knowing someone in Spain… helped him with his business… she must know Becky!! The links are starting to link.”
Another fan agreed: “If this isn’t a clue to Cassie knowing or recognising dodgy business in Spain *couch* Becky I don’t know what is. Surely this isn’t coincidence.”
A third fan added: “So Cassie can speak Spanish and helped an ex out with his ‘business’ in Spain. Oh she is so gonna be the one to reveal backhand Becky’s dodgy dealings!”
A final comment read: “So, Cassie’s talking about a Spanish boyfriend, Peter’s name being dropped recently, and Becky’s been living in Alicante. Is this all a coincidence??”
It follows another theory suggesting Cassie might know Becky, and could trigger her downfall. Fans noted her watching as Carla Connor confronted Becky for kissing Lisa Swain, and she seemed very interested.
Viewers may recall Cassie was sleeping rough while she was taking drugs. She’s now in recovery, but could Cassie and Becky have crossed paths when Cassie was on drugs?
One theory is that Becky was her dealer as others wondered if she arrested her. A fan commented: “Cassie looked like she thinks she’s seen Becky somewhere before!”
Another said: “Right it can’t just be me, it’s going to transpire Cassie knows Becky somehow isn’t it? ISN’T IT?!” A third fan wrote: “That was a look of recognition for Cassie surely. Has Becky arrested her in the past?”
A theory suggested: “Oh she’s come across her before in her past… drugs?” as another read: “I reckon she was a mate of that Tia and was in the shadows and witnessed her murder/death.” A further tweet said: “Sold her drugs is more like it.”
The theories kept on coming with one reading: “Has Becky arrested her at some point?” as someone suggested they met in Spain. A final tweet said: “I’m thinking Cassie may have had some dealings with Rebecca in the past.”
NEW YORK — Sean “Diddy” Combs demanded $20,000 from Casandra “Cassie” Ventura’s mother and threatened to release explicit sex tapes of his longtime girlfriend when he became angry that she was dating someone else, the mother testified Tuesday at the hip-hop mogul’s sex trafficking trial.
Regina Ventura said she felt “physically sick” when she received an email from Cassie in late 2011 saying Combs was planning to release two explicit videos of her and send someone to hurt her and the man she was seeing, rapper Kid Cudi.
“I did not understand a lot of it. The sex tapes threw me,” Ventura told the Manhattan federal court.
Ventura, of New London, Conn., said she then received a demand from Combs for $20,000 “to recoup money he had spent on her because he was unhappy she was in a relationship with Kid Cudi.”
“He was angry that he had spent money on her and she went with another person,” she said.
Ventura said she used a home equity loan to make the payment because “I was scared for my daughter’s safety.” Days later, she said, the money was returned, and before long, Cassie was dating Combs again.
Ventura testified for less than a half-hour, in part because defense attorney Marc Agnifilo declined to cross-examine her. During her testimony, the jury was shown photographs of bruises on Cassie’s body that Ventura testified were taken when her daughter came home for Christmas in 2011.
Before the jury arrived Tuesday, Agnifilo tried to persuade Judge Arun Subramanian to disallow the testimony, saying it was “purely prejudicial” because it illustrated the wide difference between the financial status of the Ventura family and Combs. The judge allowed it though, saying the threats to release sex tapes and harm Cassie made it an instance of “potential extortion.”
The testimony came during the second week of the trial, which is scheduled to last up to two months. If convicted of the charges he faces, including racketeering, the Bad Boy Records founder could be sentenced to at least 15 years in prison.
Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he used threats and his powerful position in the hip-hop world to abuse women and others, and force Cassie to take part in drug-fueled sexual performances with other men that she said left her too drained to pursue her singing career.
Earlier Tuesday, David James, Combs’ personal assistant from 2007 to 2009, told the court that the job seemed to come with increasing perils. He said he quit when he realized that his life had been put in danger after he was forced to drive a car in which an angry Combs sat in the back seat with three handguns on his lap.
James said his job sometimes required him to ensure that hotel rooms where Combs stayed under the name “Frank Black” were stocked with the musician’s comforts, including fresh underwear, an iPod, apple sauce, vodka, baby oil, Viagra and condoms.
There were also surprising moments, James said, like one in 2008 when Combs asked him to bring an iPod from his Miami home to a hotel room. Upon entering, James said he saw Cassie on the bed with a white comforter pulled up to her neck and an unfamiliar naked man running from the room.
Another time, he said Combs summoned him to his office to show him video he’d recorded at a party of James dancing wildly and told him: “OK. I’m going to keep this footage in case I ever need it.” James said he took it as a threat to keep him in line.
Cassie testified last week that Combs threatened to release videos of her having sex with male sex workers during so-called freak-offs Combs orchestrated if she didn’t do as he said.
James also described being required to take lie detector tests twice when Combs was trying to find out who stole cash in one instance and a watch in another.
He said Combs was on drugs nearly every day, often taking Percocet by day and ecstasy by night. When he stocked Combs’ hotel rooms, he said, drugs were in a bag dropped off by security, including the pill meant to look like then-President Obama.
The moment when James saw the three guns on Combs’ lap came when he testified that he was involved in Combs’ attempt to confront his music industry rival Suge Knight at a Los Angeles diner in November 2008 — an incident that Cassie also testified about. He said he quit soon afterward.
“I was real shook up by it,” James testified. “This was the first time being Mr. Combs’ assistant that I realized my life was in danger.”
Before Tuesday’s lunch break, Sharay Hayes, an exotic dancer known as “The Punisher,” testified that Combs and Cassie brought him into the freak-offs world. He said a woman — Cassie using a pseudonym — called and told him it was her birthday and that her husband said she should hire a dancer.
Hayes said he arrived at a Manhattan hotel room expecting to perform a striptease for a small group of people but instead found the woman who hired him — whom he later found out was Cassie — alone with an otherwise naked man who hid his face with a burqa-like cloth. That man, he said, turned out to be Combs.
Hayes recalled seeing bottles of baby oil in bowls of water and getting handed a stack of $800 in cash. Later, after Combs watched him have a sexual encounter with Cassie, he said he was handed an additional $1,200. He said he was a fan of Combs but didn’t realize it was him in the room until a subsequent encounter at another hotel where the message on the TV screen said: “Essex House would like to welcome Mr. Sean Combs.”
Sisak and Neumeister write for the Associated Press.
She already felt “trapped” in a cycle of physical and sexual abuse by him, she told a New York federal jury this week, outlining 11 years of alleged beatings, sexual blackmail and a rape.
She claimed Combs threatened to leak videos of her sexual encounters with numerous male sex workers while drug-intoxicated and glistening with baby oil as he watched and orchestrated the events, known as freak-offs.
“If I pleased him with a freak-off, then my premiere would run smoothly,” she said, according to reporting from inside the Manhattan courtroom from the Associated Press.
What happened next could end up being the beginning of the end of Combs’ public life.
Video footage from that March 2016 night shows Combs punching and kicking Ventura as she cowers and tries to protect herself in front of an L.A. hotel elevator bank. He then drags her down the hall by her hooded sweatshirt toward their hotel room. A second angle from another camera captures Combs throwing a vase toward her. She suffered bruising to her eye, a fat lip, and a bruise that prosecutors showed was still visible during the movie premiere two days later. She donned sunglasses and heavy makeup on the red carpet.
Ventura’s testimony is at the center of the federal trial accusing Combs of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation for prostitution.
Sweeping allegations
The federal indictment alleges that Combs and his associates lured female victims, often under the pretense of a romantic relationship. Combs then allegedly used force, threats of force, coercion and controlled substances to get women to engage in sex acts with male prostitutes while he occasionally watched in gatherings that Combs referred to as “freak-offs.” Combs gave the women ketamine, ecstasy and GHB to “keep them obedient and compliant” during the performances.
The freak-offs, which prosecutors say sometimes lasted for days, were elaborately produced sex performances that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during, and often recorded, according to the indictment. Prosecutors allege in a detention memo filed in court that the freak-offs occurred regularly from at least 2009 through 2023 and that the hotel rooms where they were staged often sustained significant damage.
Combs’ alleged “criminal enterprise” threatened and abused women and utilized members of his enterprise to engage in sex trafficking, forced labor, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, coercion and enticement to engage in prostitution, narcotics offenses, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice, prosecutors said. In bringing so-called RICO charges, prosecutors in opening statements said Combs was helped by cadre of company employees, security staff and aides. They allegedly helped organize the crime and “freak-offs” and then covered up the incidents. Thus far, Combs is the only one facing criminal charges related to the investigation.
Combs’ attorney this week said her client was far from perfect but that the charges were overblown.
“Sean Combs is a complicated man. But this is not a complicated case. This case is about love, jealousy, infidelity and money,” Combs’ lawyer Teny Geragos told jurors. “There has been a tremendous amount of noise around this case over the past year. It is time to cancel that noise.”
How Ventura and Combs met
Jurors heard that Ventura was 19 when she met the 37-year-old Combs in 2005, and she signed a 10-year contract with his Bad Boy Records label. About two years later, he had Britney Spears come to her 21st birthday party, where Ventura and Combs kissed and their relationship began, she said. She testified that the freak-offs became a way of life, and she even stepped away from her own birthday party for one.
Cassie Ventura, left, and Sean “Diddy” Combs arrive at the Los Angeles premiere of “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story” at the Writers Guild Theater on June 21, 2017, in Beverly Hills.
(Chris Pizzello / Invision / AP)
Combs, she told jurors, required her to let a male sex worker urinate in her mouth. That man and others were paid thousands of dollars to have sex repeatedly for 36 to 48 hours, she told the jury.
On the stand, Ventura identified 13 male sex workers through photos presented by prosecutors that she said Combs’ had her recruit for the freak-offs. Hers and Combs’ relationship would end on a day in 2018 when she met him for dinner and he raped her on her living room floor, she testified.
Violence
During four days of testimony, Ventura, who is eight and a half months pregnant, described being raped, beaten at least six times, most severely in 2009.
In the 2009 attack, she testified that Combs was “stomping” on her face after he discovered she was dating rapper Kid Cudi. Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, had his car torched a short time afterward. Prosecutors allege in court papers that Combs ordered it.
Legal analysis
Legal experts say the testimony is designed to build the federal case against Combs, even if on the surface it does not appear directly related to the charges he’s facing.
“Why is the government talking about rape and assault when the charges are RICO and sex trafficking?” said former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani. Well, he said, “what separates sex trafficking from consensual sex between adults — which the defense is arguing — is force, fraud or coercion.”
“Ventura’s testimony that she was given drugs to the point of throwing up … and forced to have sex when she was menstruating or had a UTI is evidence of coercion,” he said.
Rahmani said that Ventura’s portrayal of Combs as a gun-brandishing mogul who beat her on multiple occasions, tracked her movements and sent a security team to find her is evidence of force.
Then there were the alleged threats. She recounted that during a commercial flight in 2013, Combs pulled out his laptop and began playing a freak-off recording as they sat together. She said Combs told her that he was going to embarrass her and release them.
“I feared for my career. I feared for my family. It’s just embarrassing. It’s horrible and disgusting. No one should do that to anyone,” Ventura said.
Authorities raid Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Los Angeles home as part of an ongoing sex trafficking investigation
(Eric Thayer / Associated Press)
Rahmani said the racketeering charge against Combs requires prosecutors to prove the existence of a criminal enterprise.
“People typically think of the mob, street gangs, or drug cartels, but any loose association of two or more people is enough like Combs’ entourage,” the former federal prosecutor said. They must show two or more predicate acts over 10 years.
“That is why the evidence of bribery, kidnapping, obstruction, witness tampering and prostitution is important,” he said.
LAPD officer testimony
Israel Florez, a hotel security guard who confronted Combs in 2016, now a Los Angeles Police officer, testified Combs flashed a bundle of cash at him — something he believed was an attempted bribe. He rejected it, he said.
Combs’ defense is seeking to paint Ventura as participating in the behavior, recruiting and paying sex partners, acquiring narcotics and texting to push for freak-offs that were part of a swingers’ lifestyle. She is one of four alleged victims in the case, with jurors expected to hear from at least three of them.
On Thursday, defense attorney Anne Estevao had Ventura read a series of loving texts to Combs and got Ventura to testify she’d watched Combs have sex with another woman on multiple occasions. To support the swingers’ defense, the lawyer produced a 2009 text where the singer declared, “I’m always ready to freak off.”
Ventura sued Combs in the fall of 2023, accusing him of years of physical and sexual abuse, triggering a cascade of lawsuits and allegations by others who say they’re victims of Combs and eventually, a raid by Homeland Security on his L.A. and Miami homes and his arrest. Ventura acknowledged Wednesday that she got a $20-million settlement within days of filing her lawsuit.
Combs attorney pushes back
During opening statements in a Manhattan federal courtroom, Geragos, one of Combs’ defense attorneys, drew a distinction for jurors between the violence they would hear testimony about and the charges Combs was facing, saying “domestic violence is not sex trafficking.”
She said the video of Ventura’s assault in the hotel was indefensible, but that the singer “made a choice” to stay with Combs for 11 years.
After the attack, a friend called police to Ventura’s home, she testified. But when officers arrived, she did not identify Combs as the culprit.
The prosecutor asked her why she did not talk. “In that moment, I didn’t want to hurt him that way. I wasn’t ready,” she replied.
On Thursday, the defense cross-examining Ventura sought to change the narrative using dozens of text messages between Combs and Ventura. In a July 2013 text message exchange, Comb’s defense lawyer noted that Cassie raised the idea of having a “freak-off,” writing to Combs: “Wish we could’ve FO’d before you left.”
Using the text message exchanges, the defense lawyer highlighted Ventura’s admitted jealousy over the attention he gave other women.
“You’re making me look like a side piece and that is not what I thought I was,” Cassie told Combs in a 2013 text message.
Estevao tried to recast the hotel incident as the result of the two taking a “bad batch” of the psychedelic stimulant MDMA during a “freak-off” before the hotel beating.
During her testimony this week, Ventura testified that Combs allegedly overdosed on opioids while partying at the Playboy Mansion in 2012. While she wasn’t there, she said, he told her about it.
Ventura’s testimony ended on Friday.
The Associated Press contributed court testimony for this analysis.
Sean Combs and Cassie at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala in 2015
In a trial that is undoing the legacy of one of music’s biggest moguls of the 2000s, the focus of the opening week of proceedings was not Sean “Diddy” Combs himself – but his ex-girlfriend.
R&B singer Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura took the witness stand for four days, describing in emotion details the years of beatings and drug-fuelled sex encounters with prostitutes that she alleges she endured at the hands of the rap superstar, who she dated for more than a decade.
But while her story clearly left an impression on those in the courtroom, which one onlooker described as an “aura of sadness”, it is just one piece in the puzzle that prosecutors must present to prove that Mr Combs was not just an abuser, but a mastermind of a criminal, sexual enterprise.
On Tuesday, gasps erupted in a Manhattan overflow courtroom when prosecutors called Ms Ventura – their star witness – to the stand. All eyes were fixed on the eight-months pregnant singer, as she strolled past her ex-boyfriend, whom she had not seen in six years.
Ms Ventura was there to testify in the federal sex trafficking, racketeering and prostitution case against Mr Combs, whom she accuses of abusing her and coercing her into unwanted sex acts – so-called “freak-offs” – during their 11-and-a-half year relationship.
Mr Combs is charged with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution – all of which he has vehemently denied.
Surrounded by his children and dozens of family and friends, Mr Combs has watched Ms Ventura from his chair at the defence table just a few dozen feet away.
All the while, US District Judge Arun Subramanian has pushed attorneys to stay on schedule, as prosecutors have expressed worry their star witness could go into labour with her third child as soon as this weekend.
An aspiring musician falls in love with a ‘larger-than-life’ rapper
On her first day on the stand, Ms Ventura began by taking prosecutors through the start of her tumultuous relationship with Mr Combs, whom she met when she was a 19-year-old aspiring musician. Mr Combs, 17 years her senior, signed her onto his record label.
Their romantic relationship began soon after, when Ms Ventura fell in love with the “larger-than-life” musician and entrepreneur, she said. But it was not long before she noticed a “different” side to him, Ms Ventura testified, at times wiping the tears from her eyes.
Mr Combs, she said, wanted to control every aspect of her life. He paid for her rent, her car, and her phone, sometimes taking the items away to “punish” her when he was upset, she said.
Eventually, the relationship turned violent. She testified about the time when he attacked her because she was sleeping, slashing her eyebrow as he threw her onto the corner of her bed as her two friends tried to stop him. The court was shown a photo of the gash that Ms Ventura said Mr Combs hired a plastic surgeon to fix secretly. There was another time at a party where he kicked her head as she cowered behind a toilet in a bathroom stall, she said.
While jurors remained concentrated on her testimony and the evidence, betraying little emotion, some in the courtroom wiped away tears or looked away from the graphic photos and videos – including the viral video of Mr Combs beating and dragging Ms Ventura in the hallway of the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles in 2016.
Published by CNN last year, the video has been viewed by millions – including many of the jurors before they were seated in the trial – and Ms Ventura, who was forced to rewatch the incident of abuse several times this week.
Watch: Hotel surveillance footage shows Diddy kick and drag Cassie
Freak-offs become ‘a job’
Ms Ventura testified that the hotel incident took place after she tried to leave a “freak-off”, a sexual encounter in which the couple would hire male escorts to have sex with Ms Ventura while Mr Combs watched and recorded from the corner.
Ms Ventura said the rapper introduced her to freak-offs around a year into their relationship, and at first, she did it to make him happy.
But over time, the encounters humiliated her, she said. They would sometimes last as long as four days, and require Ms Ventura to take countless drugs to stay awake, she said. She endured injuries like painful urinary tract infections – and once even blacked out, waking up in the shower, she said.
“It made me feel worthless,” she told the court. “Freak-offs became a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and just try to feel normal again.”
The couple would go on to have “hundreds” of freak-offs, Ms Ventura estimated.
After years of temporary break-ups – some fuelled by Mr Combs’ affairs – Ms Ventura ended her relationship with Mr Combs for good in 2018, the same year she alleges the rapper raped her in her home as she cried.
Ms Ventura went on to date and marry her personal trainer, Alex Fine, with whom she has two children, but the trauma of her relationship has stayed with her.
Through tears, Ms Ventura told the court of a time two years ago when she considered taking her own life, when traumatic flashbacks of her time with Mr Combs became too much to handle. Her husband helped her seek therapy to recover, she said.
Consent vs compliance: Prosecutors build their sex trafficking case
Get all the latest trial updates on the BBC Sounds ‘Diddy on Trial’ podcast available wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
Throughout Ms Ventura’s harrowing story of domestic violence, prosecutors have tried to thread in elements of their larger sex trafficking and racketeering case against Mr Combs.
Mr Combs’s attorneys have already conceded that the rapper was abusive – and have argued they would not have fought a domestic violence case against him. But, “domestic violence is not sex trafficking”, Mr Combs’ attorney Teny Geragos argued this week.
The federal government has charged Mr Combs with transportation to engage in prostitution and sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion.
He is also charged with leading a racketeering conspiracy, or directing an illegal enterprise under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The statute was created to take on mob bosses, but has since been used in other cases, including sex trafficking, such as the case against disgraced R&B singer R Kelly.
Assistant US Attorney Emily Johnson used parts of Ms Ventura’s story to boost this case, asking her about the guns the rapper had access to and the ways he allegedly blackmailed her.
Ms Ventura told the court of a time when she said Mr Combs pulled up videos he recorded of their freak-offs on his laptop, in view of others on a commercial flight. She said he told her he would release them if she didn’t behave.
“I felt trapped,” Ms Ventura said.
Arick Fudali, a lawyer who represents an unnamed victim in the government’s case against Mr Combs, said “the fear of what would happen if they didn’t comply” is a crucial element of the government’s case.
“Someone can consent to a sexual act of course,” Mr Fudali told the BBC. “But someone can also be coerced into being compliant, and that’s different.”
The government has also used Ms Ventura’s testimony to try to build up their racketeering argument – the allegation that Mr Combs used his loyal network of associates to run a criminal enterprise and cover up his alleged crimes.
Prosecutors have asked Ms Ventura about security guards who she said stood by while Mr Combs abused her. Ms Ventura has testified about Mr Combs’ employees’ involvement in setting up freak-offs with supplies like baby oil, and booking travel for the male escorts they hired.
Watch: The BBC’s Nada Tawfik on how Diddy’s lawyers used freak-off texts against Cassie
Mr Combs’ team says jealousy and drugs fuelled violence
After a day and a half on the stand, it was Mr Combs’ attorneys turn to question Ms Ventura.
The rapper’s lawyer, Anna Estevao, relied on hundreds of pages of text messages between Mr Combs and Ms Ventura to help push her team’s broader arguments: that Ms Ventura was a willing participant in freak-offs in a toxic relationship fuelled by drugs and jealousy.
Mr Combs’ legal team showed messages from Ms Ventura to Mr Combs in which she said she was “always ready” for a freak-off, and another time when she said she wished they could have had one.
Ms Ventura acknowledged writing the messages while adding that those were “just words at that point”.
Ms Estevao also kept bringing Ms Ventura back to the couple’s moments of infidelity, like when Mr Combs would spend holidays with his family and former girlfriend Kim Porter, or when Ms Ventura began dating rapper Kid Cudi while she and Mr Combs were on a break.
She repeatedly asked Ms Ventura about her drug use and how both she and Mr Combs struggled with opioid addiction at times.
In these moments, the defence was trying to show jurors that it was a toxic, violent and complicated relationship – but not a case of racketeering or sex trafficking, former federal prosecutor Sarah Krissoff told the BBC.
The defence also made efforts to try to chip away at the government’s racketeering case, asking Ms Ventura whether Mr Combs’ employees had actually witnessed the freak-offs, to which Ms Ventura said she did not think so.
Ultimately, Mr Fudali said, the prosecution’s case will hinge on this question of compliance versus consent – whether Mr Combs’ girlfriends were willing participants in his sexual fantasies or acted out of fear.
“Did Ms Ventura consent or was she coerced into complying?” Mr Fudali said. “That seems to be the question for the jury.”
