Grammy-winning Chicago rapper Lil Durk has been charged with two additional felonies in a new superseding indictment that alleges he used “coded language” to set in motion a murder-for-hire plot that resulted in the death of Georgia rapper Quando Rondo's cousin.
Lil Durk, born Durk Banks, was arrested in the case last month as he was traveling to a Miami airport to board a private jet bound for Italy, prosecutors previously said. He initially was charged with one count of alleged conspiracy in the fatal shooting. The new indictment, returned Thursday in Los Angeles, adds Banks as the lead defendant to an October 17 indictment that previously charged five other men in connection with the August 2022 murder at a gas station near the Beverly Center mall.
In addition to his initial conspiracy charge, Banks is now facing one new count of use of interstate facilities to commit murder-for-hire resulting in death, and one new count of using, carrying, and discharging firearms and a machine gun and possession of such firearms in furtherance of a crime of violence resulting in death.
Banks, 32, remained in custody in a federal detention center in Miami on Friday morning, according to online jail records. He's expected to be extradited to Los Angeles for arraignment in federal court in the coming weeks, officials said. Attempts to reach a spokesperson for the “All My Life” rapper were not immediately successful Friday.
According to prosecutors, Banks “was the leader” of a hip-hop collective founded in Chicago in 2010 called Only the Family, or OTF. While the group produced and sold music, it also allegedly “engaged in violence, including murder and assault,” largely at Banks' “direction,” the accused states.
Prosecutors claim Banks personally ordered the murder at the center of the indictment as retaliation for the fatal shooting of rising Chicago rapper King Von, born Dayvon Bennett, outside an Atlanta club on Nov. 6, 2020. Bennett and Banks were childhood friends, with Banks signing Bennett to his label in 2018, the same year Bennett released his debut single, “Crazy Story.”
Prosecutors allege Georgia rapper Quando Rondo, born Tyquian Terrel Bowman, was involved in an “altercation” with Bennett shortly before one of Bowman's associates pulled out a gun and shot Bennett multiple times. “After the murder, defendant Banks made clear, in coded language, that he would pay a bounty or monetary reward, and/or make payment to anyone who took part in killing [Bowman] for his role in [Bennett’s] murder,” the superseding accusing states.
Prosecutors allege that Banks and his five co-defendants hastily traveled from Chicago to Los Angeles in August 2022 after they learned that Bowman was staying at a hotel in the city. They allege Banks' five co-defendants “used two vehicles and worked in tandem to track, stalk, and attempt to murder [Bowman] for hours,” culminating in the gas station shooting. The alleged co-conspirators purportedly used multiple guns, including a machine gun, in the caught-on-video attack. The gunmen fired at least 18 rounds at Bowman's vehicle, striking and killing Bowman's cousin, Saviay'a Robinson, who was traveling with him, prosecutors claim.
According to the indictment, banking and flight records show that an OTF member and “close associate” of Banks planned and paid for four of his co-defendants to travel from Chicago to California the day before the murder. Around the time the one-way flights were purchased, Banks allegedly told the OTF associate, “Don't book no flights under no names involved wit [sic] me,” the accused states.
The same day the alleged hitmen traveled to California, Banks also flew in on a private jet with another conspirator identified as Kavon London Grant, 28, the indictment claims. Grant allegedly purchased ski masks for the shooters and used a credit card in Banks' name to pay for the other men's hotel room, prosecutors allege.
When Banks' co-defendants were arrested in Chicago the morning of Oct. 24, Banks purportedly started making plans to flee the country, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit filed last month. The agent said that “shortly after” officials made the Chicago arrests and started executing search warrants, the FBI was notified by US Customs and Border Protection that Banks had been booked on separate one-way flights to Dubai and Switzerland, leaving out of the Miami area. He did not board either flight and was arrested in the vicinity of a Miami airport an hour before his private jet bound for Italy was set to depart, the agent wrote.
If convicted as charged, all the defendants in the superseding indictment would face a maximum of life in federal prison.
