Sharay Hayes is six feet two, rippling with muscles and nicknamed “The Punisher”.

In 2015, working as an exotic dancer at the top of his game, he was described by the New York Post as giving Channing Tatum “a run for his money”.

The Punisher, whose Instagram profile is all abs, leather and chains, partied with some of America’s most beautiful women, hunkiest men and biggest stars.

He never thought that his glamorous lifestyle would lead him to a courtroom, in which jurors would be shown footage of him having sex with the R&B singer Cassie Ventura during the blockbuster sex trafficking trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs.

Today, Combs was cleared of racketeering conspiracy, and two counts of sex trafficking. He was convicted on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. He denied all charges.

The mogul was accused of intimidating women, including Ventura, into participating in “freak-offs”. A jury decided on Wednesday that this was not the case.

The parties were days-long, drug-fuelled orgies with male escorts, in which participants rubbed baby oil on each other and had sex as Combs watched.

Prosecution lawyers had previously claimed Combs was the “leader of a criminal enterprise”, who “doesn’t take no for an answer”. Combs’s team had argued that he was simply into the swinging lifestyle.