Chicago rapper Lil Durk faces life in prison over alleged plot targeting rival

CHICAGO (WGN) – Grammy Award-winning Chicago rapper “Lil Durk” is facing new charges in connection with an alleged murder-for-hire plot targeting a rival rapper. He could now be facing life in federal prison.

The 32-year-old rapper, whose birth name is Durk Devontay Banks, has been charged with one count of conspiracy, one count of use of interstate facilities to commit murder-for-hire resulting in death, and one 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, according to a superseding federal grand jury indictment announced by the Justice Department on Friday.

The latest indictment includes two additional felony charges against Banks and adds him as the lead defendant to a previous indictment, which charged 28-year-old Kavon London Grant, 33-year-old Deandre Dontrell Wilson, 33-year-old Keith Jones, 33-year-old David Brian Lindsey, and 36-year-old Asa Houston in connection with the plot.

In addition to the charges, Jones also faces one count of possession of a machine gun.

The charges stem from an alleged murder-for-hire plot targeting Georgia-based rapper Quando Rondo, whose real name is Tyquian Terrel Bowman, over his suspected involvement in the 2020 murder of Chicago rapper King Von, whose real name is Dayvon Daquan Bennett, in Atlanta.

According to prosecutors, all six individuals involved allegedly have ties to the hip-hop group “Only the Family” (OTF), which was formed by Banks in 2010.

Prosecutors alleged that OTF not only produced and sold hip-hop music from Chicago artists, but that it also acted as “an association-in-fact of individuals who engaged in violence, including murder and assault, at Banks’ direction and to maintain their status in OTF.”

The indictment accuses Banks of putting out a bounty on Bowman two years after Bennett's murder, offering money and music opportunities in exchange for his murder.

Prosecutors said members of the group learned that Bowman was staying at a hotel in Los Angeles in August 2022, while banking and flight records allegedly showed that an OTF member and associate of Banks coordinated and paid for the five co-conspirators to travel to California from Chicago the day before the murder. The group then allegedly used money from Banks and OTF-related finances to carry out the hit.

Prosecutors further alleged that when the flights were booked, Banks told the OTF associate “Don’t book no flights under no names involved wit [sic] me.”

On the same day the group allegedly traveled to California, prosecutors said Banks and Grant also traveled to Los Angeles in a private jet. After arriving, Grant allegedly bought ski masks and purchased a hotel room for the other co-conspirators’ using a credit card in Banks’ name.

The day after arriving in Los Angeles, on Aug. 19, prosecutors said the group used two rented vehicles, a white BMW sedan and a white Infiniti, and used them to track and stalk Bowman as he, his sister and his cousin, 24-year-old Saviay’a Robinson, drove around LA in a black Cadillac Escalade.

Bowman eventually made a stop at a gas station along Beverly Boulevard and prosecutors said that is when Houston allegedly drove to an alley behind the gas station before letting the OTF members out to carry out the shooting.

While Bowman and his sister were not injured in the shooting, Robinson was killed.

Banks was taken into custody in Miami on Oct. 24, the day after the initial indictment was unsealed. Following his arrest, the FBI learned that Banks had allegedly booked at least three international flights.

The other five individuals named in the indictment are currently in federal custody in Illinois.

All six individuals named in the indictment have yet to enter a plea to the charges and are expected to be arraigned in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in the weeks ahead.

If convicted, they could face a statutory maximum sentence of life in federal prison.