Legal
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Min Hee-jin’s mission to be reappointed as CEO of NewJeans’ label ADOR just hit another hurdle. On Tuesday (Oct. 29), a South Korean court dismissed the embattled executive’s application to be reinstated in the position, according to reports from Korea JoongAng Daily and Mael Business Newspaper.
According to a source familiar with the matter, the dismissal means the court ruled in favor of HYBE and terminated the case without a judgment on its merits — essentially not conceding or accepting Min’s filing to begin with.
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Min originally submitted her application for reappointment on Sept. 13. In it, she asked the court to order HYBE’s internal board to re-elect a “new” CEO (a.k.a. herself), arguing that she needed to be in the position in order for NewJeans to continue its activities. However, the court’s latest decision has weakened that argument, the source says. Should Min continue her push to be reinstated as CEO, she will likely need to use a different argument to have any chance of her case moving forward.
For the time being, Min is expected to stay on as an internal director of ADOR. She was replaced as CEO by Kim Ju-young, HYBE’s head HR officer, in August.
“We acknowledge and appreciate the court’s wise ruling,” a representative for HYBE tells Billboard in a statement. “In light of this decision, HYBE is dedicated to normalizing ADOR’s operations, improving our multi-label capabilities, and supporting the activities of our artists.”
The development is the latest event in Min and HYBE’s months-long power struggle over ADOR and its powerhouse act NewJeans that stretches back to April 2024. Following an internal audit of ADOR, HYBE — also home to acts like BTS, Seventeen and Le Sserafim — called for the immediate resignation of Min as CEO, accusing her of trying to hijack the label imprint as well as NewJeans. The conflict has since devolved into a tangled web of he-said-she-saids, multiple lawsuits, and ultimately, Min stepping down from her position on Aug. 27.
Throughout the process, the members of NewJeans have become increasingly involved in the conflict, publicly sharing their support for Min during live performances and in a since-deleted 27-minute YouTube video in which they alleged mistreatment and a toxic work environment at HYBE. Most recently, NewJeans member Hanni, 20, appeared in court to testify to South Korean lawmakers about alleged workplace harassment, saying, “I came to the realization that this wasn’t just a feeling. I was honestly convinced that the company hated us.” During her testimony, she cited instances when she felt HYBE undermined the band and senior managers of the company deliberately ignored her.
While Min hasn’t yet released an official statement regarding the latest court decision, she’s gone on the record to South Korean media saying that she plans to “go all the way” in her legal pursuit to be reinstated.
Following the court’s decision, ADOR’s internal board again voted against reinstating Min on Wednesday (Oct. 30).
Superstar producer Metro Boomin is facing a civil lawsuit over allegations that he raped and impregnated a woman in 2016, then referenced the incident in one of his songs.
In a complaint filed Tuesday (Oct. 29) in Los Angeles court, attorneys for Vanessa LeMaistre say she blacked out after ingesting a Xanax and a shot of alcohol in his recording studio during the September 2016 session, then awoke to find herself being sexually assaulted by Metro (Leland Wayne).
“The next thing Ms. LeMaistre can recall is waking up on a bed in a different location with Wayne raping her and being completely unable to move or make a sound,” her lawyers write. “At no point during this encounter was Ms. LeMaistre able to consent to any sexual activity, and Wayne’s conduct without question constituted rape and sexual assault.”
In a response statement, Metro Boomin’s attorney Lawrence Hinkle II called the lawsuit “a pure shakedown” against his client: “These are false accusations. Mr. Wayne refused to pay her months ago, and he refuses to pay her now. Mr. Wayne will defend himself in court. He will file a claim for malicious prosecution once he prevails.”
The lawsuit claims Metro exploited the death of LeMaistre’s infant son to gain her trust, and that she believed they had “bonded over the ability of music to help people in their darkest moments.” But it says that belief was “shattered” after he invited her to the studio for the September 2016 session.
“Meeting Wayne resulted in Ms. LeMaistre suffering from the second worst thing that ever happened to her — being raped by someone who pretended to be her friend for months,” her lawyers write. “Ms. LeMaistre is still working to put herself back together after experiencing such an extraordinary amount of trauma at the hands of Wayne — someone she truly believed to be her friend but turned out to be her worst nightmare.”
Weeks after the alleged assault, LeMaistre says she learned she was pregnant. She says she did not have sex with anyone else other than Metro and that the pregnancy was the result of the alleged rape. Due to the “recent loss of her son and the traumatic cause of her pregnancy,” her lawyers say she could not continue the pregnancy and had an abortion in November 2016.
Notably, the lawsuit claims the alleged attack is referenced in the 2017 song “Rap Saved Me,” released by 21 Savage, Offset and Metro on their collaborative studio album Without Warning. The lyrics in question are: “She took a Xanny, then she fainted/ I’m from the gutter, ain’t no changing/ From the gutter, rap saved me/ She drive me crazy, have my baby.”
“The lyrics were horrifying for Ms. LeMaistre to hear over and over again, as they recounted the situation that happened to her and caused further trauma,” her lawyers write.
LeMaistre is represented by lawyers from Wigdor, the same law firm that filed a high-profile civil lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs last year on behalf of his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura — a case that was then followed by a flood of other allegations and eventual federal criminal charges.
In a statement, the Wigdor attorneys referenced the alleged connection between the lyrics to “Rap Saved Me” and LeMaistre’s accusations.
“Metro Boomin has built a successful career with lyrics and social media that are not only offensive but also explicitly outline his intentions to harm women,” the firm wrote in a joint statement with LeMaistre’s co-counsel from the law firm Gerard Bengali. “These are more than mere words, and it’s time for him to be held accountable for his manipulative tactics and unacceptable behavior.”
Read the entire lawsuit against Metro here:
A co-defendant in Young Thug’s YSL RICO case has agreed to a plea deal, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The outlet reports that Quamarvious Nichols, 29, reached a plea deal with prosecutors on Tuesday (Oct. 29), in which he pleaded guilty to a single count of violating Georgia’s anti-racketeering laws in exchange for having several […]
Tekashi 6ix9ine (Daniel Hernandez) was arrested Tuesday (Oct. 29) over allegations that he violated the terms of a parole agreement struck with prosecutors after the rapper agreed to testify against his former Brooklyn gangmates.
The rapper was arraigned in Manhattan federal court Tuesday over alleged violations of his supervised release, which is set to expire in April 2025. According to court records, Tekashi pleaded not guilty to the new violations and was ordered to remain in custody until his next court date.
In a statement to Billboard, Tekashi’s attorney Lance Lazzaro said his client had been “charged with three technical violations regarding his supervised release” and that he was “confident that each specification will be dismissed.”
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Tekashi was originally charged in 2018 with federal racketeering and murder conspiracy charges over his involvement with a New York City street gang called Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods. He then famously flipped on the gang and provided bombshell testimony in return for a plea deal, which saw him sentenced to just two years in prison and five years of supervised release.
At Tuesday’s hearing, prosecutors argued that Tekashi had violated his release conditions by traveling to Las Vegas without permission, failing to submit for drug testing and testing positive for methamphetamine, according to Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press.
The hearing featured arguments from Lazzaro that the failed drug test was from the use of prescribed Adderall, according to Josh Russell of Courthouse News — but the judge was apparently unswayed, citing a “broader pattern” of misconduct during parole that he said suggests a “full spectrum disregard for the law.”
Tekashi’s next court date is an evidentiary hearing set for Nov. 12.
Once a rising star in the world of hip-hop and social media, Tekashi was charged in November 2018 alongside several other members of Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods, who prosecutors claimed “wreaked havoc on New York City” by “engaging in brazen acts of violence.”
But just a day after being arrested, Hernandez cut a deal with federal prosecutors to flip on his crew in return for lenience. Taking the witness stand during a 2019 trial, he offered detailed and frank testimony about his involvement in the gang and his former gangmates.
Under the deal with prosecutors, Tekashi was sentenced to two years in prison and five years of supervised release and ordered to serve 1,000 hours of community service and pay a $35,000 fine.
The prison sentence was set to run until July 2020, but Hernandez was released early, in April 2020, after his attorneys argued that the COVID-19 pandemic posed an increased risk to him because he suffers from asthma.
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: Lil Durk faces federal murder-for-hire charges over allegedly ordering his associates to kill a rival rapper; Megan Thee Stallion’s lawyer threatens legal action over false reports about Tory Lanez being declared “innocent”; Ye and Adidas reach a settlement to resolve legal disputes over the end of their Yeezy partnership; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Lil Durk Charged With Murder For Hire Plot
Two years after the rapper Quando Rondo was ambushed by gunmen at a Los Angeles gas station, federal prosecutors charged Chicago drill star Lil Durk with ordering the attack ––an assault they say was retribution for the 2020 killing of rising star King Von.
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The Chicago rapper (real name Durk Devontay Banks) was arrested as he attempted to flee the country on a private jet, hours after several of his Only the Family associates were indicted on similar charges over their alleged involvement in the attack, which left Rondo unscathed but saw his cousin killed in the crossfire.
Much like the ongoing case in Atlanta against Young Thug and his YSL group, prosecutors say Only The Family was not merely a well-publicized group of Chicago rappers, but a “hybrid organization” that also functioned as a criminal gang to carry out violent acts “at the direction” of Durk.
“Mr. Banks is charged with orchestrating a cold-blooded murder that resulted in the death of a rival’s family member,” said United States Attorney Martin Estrada. “Violent gun crime of this sort is devastating to our community and we will have zero-tolerance for those who perpetrate such callous acts of violence.”
For more, go read our full story here, which includes access to the actual charging documents unveiled against Durk.
Other top stories…
FAKE NEWS DEBUNKED – False claims circulated on social media over the weekend that a California appeals court had declared Tory Lanez “innocent” in the 2020 shooting of Megan Thee Stallion. That’s not at all what actually happened, and now Megan’s attorney is threatening legal action over the “nonsense” that went viral: “They’re going to face consequences.”
DIDDY SUED YET AGAIN – Sean “Diddy” Combs was hit with two new civil abuse lawsuits, including one that accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy in a New York City hotel room in 2005. The second case accused the hip-hop mogul of similarly assaulting a 17-year-old would-be contestant on the reality television series Making the Band in 2008. Combs is currently in jail awaiting trial on sweeping federal criminal charges over decades of alleged sexual abuse.
CHAOS IN YSL CASE – Young Thug’s long-running Atlanta gang trial was once again thrown into chaos after a state’s witness accidentally revealed sensitive information to the jury — a mistake the judge quickly attributed to “sloppiness” from prosecutors. The move left the judge contemplating whether to declare a mistrial and sparked plea deal negotiations between the government and the defendants. It’s only the latest delay in a criminal trial that has stretched across 10 months of jury selection and 11 months of testimony to become the longest-ever in state history.
YEEZY SETTLEMENT – Adidas reached a settlement with Ye (formerly Kanye West) to resolve all outstanding legal claims stemming from the company’s decision to end its partnership with the rapper and his Yeezy brand. The deal came two years after Adidas terminated its lucrative partnership with the rapper over his antisemitic statements and erratic behavior.
DEPOSITION DRAMA – The Texas Supreme Court ruled that Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino must sit for a deposition in the ongoing litigation over the 2021 disaster at the Astroworld music festival, rejecting Live Nation’s argument that the exec wasn’t closely involved in festival operations. Victims’ lawyers cited an email Rapino sent the night of the disaster ordering another employee to wait for more info before canceling the rest of the festival: “If 5 died we would cancel,” he wrote in the message.
WHAT’S IN A NAME? Beyoncé’s attorneys once again asked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to register her daughter’s name as a trademark, more than 12 years after she and Jay-Z first sought to lock up the intellectual property rights “Blue Ivy Carter.” In the latest filing, they pushed back on concerns that consumers might confuse Blue Ivy’s name with another Blue Ivy: a single-store clothing boutique in Wisconsin that has used the name since before the young Carter was born.
Adidas has reached a settlement with Ye (formerly Kanye West) to resolve all outstanding legal claims stemming from the company’s decision to end its partnership with the rapper and his Yeezy brand.
The deal, announced by CEO Bjorn Gulden during a quarterly earnings call and first reported by Bloomberg, came roughly two years after Adidas announced it would terminate its years-long brand deal with Ye in the wake of his antisemitic statements and other erratic behavior.
“Both parties said we don’t need to fight anymore and withdrew all the claims,” Gulden said on the call, adding that neither side would pay the other as part of the settlement. “No one owes anybody anything anymore. So whatever was is history.”
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It’s unclear exactly what legal disputes were ongoing when the deal was reached. The two sides were engaged in private arbitration over the split last year, but the status of that case is unknown. A rep for Ye did not immediately return a request for comment on Adidas’s announcement.
Adidas, which operated a lucrative sneaker collaboration with West for nearly a decade, was one of many companies to terminate its relationship with the rapper in the fall of 2022 after a string of bizarre statements and actions, like unveiling a “White Lives Matter” shirt at Paris Fashion Week and claiming he was going “death con 3 on Jewish people.”
It was a messy breakup for Adidas. The split left the company holding $1.3 billion worth of unsold Yeezys and no easy option to unload them, contributing to a loss of $655 million in sales for the last three months of 2022.
Days after Adidas announced the split with West, court records show that the company demanded Yeezy return $75 million that had allegedly been deposited into its accounts. When Yeezy refused, Adidas secretly filed a case in federal court, seeking an order to immediately freeze those funds. A judge initially granted that motion, but then later unfroze the funds.
In the course of that litigation, both sides revealed that they were also engaged in a private arbitration case over the termination of the partnership. The exact parameters of the dispute were kept secret, but Adidas argued in public court documents that Ye’s “racist, antisemitic, and other offensive public statements and conduct” had caused “considerable damage to its brand” and led to the breakdown of the partnership.
“Adidas has multiple causes of action against Yeezy, resulting from Ye’s highly public and offensive conduct described above, which violated the terms of the agreement and justified adidas’s termination of that contract,” the company argued. “Those broader causes of action, as well as the dispute over [issues], will be resolved through arbitration.”
On Friday evening, almost two years after Tory Lanez was convicted of shooting Megan Thee Stallion, posts on X (formerly Twitter) blared stunning “news” about the case: that a California appeals court had “found Tory Lanez to be innocent” and would “reinvestigate” the case to see if he was “unfairly prosecuted.”
The claims, which appear to have first been posted by an account called Akademiks TV run by the popular blogger and podcaster DJ Akademiks, came with a screenshot of an official-looking document signed by three judges. Numerous commenters celebrated that the singer had seemingly been vindicated.
Just one problem: That’s not at all what happened.
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Instead, the appeals court merely issued a procedural order acknowledging that it had received a new petition from Lanez’s legal team and would consider it alongside his other appeals. That’s all that occurred – something that was obvious to anyone who actually read the document. Lanez challenges to the conviction remains pending, and they continue to face long odds for success.
With a false story circulating, the internet quickly swung into gear. Meghann Cuniff, a popular legal journalist who has closely covered the Lanez case, blasted the posts for “spreading lies.” The X account Bad Legal Takes, which highlights examples of misinformed legal reasoning, featured an image of the Akademiks post. X’s own platform later added “community notes” to some versions, stating that such claims were false.
But as with many instances of misinformation on the modern internet, some damage was likely already done. Though Akademiks TV eventually deleted its post, it was likely seen by thousands. A later post from an account called Daily Loud, featuring the same claim and the same screenshot, is still live on the site as of Tuesday and has currently racked up 5.1 million views.
In an interview with Billboard on Monday, Megan Thee Stallion’s attorney Alex Spiro sharply criticized the social media accounts that shared the story, saying they “make a living out of complete nonsense” and that “they’re going to face consequences.”
“This appeal when it is eventually heard will be denied, so all [Lanez] can do is gaslight and spin off these nonsense bloggers from inside custody, where he will remain,” Spiro said. “We are taking legal action. Stay tuned.”
Spiro declined to comment on who exactly would face legal action or what such action would look like. Akademiks TV did not immediately return a direct message on X seeking comment.
Lanez (Daystar Peterson) was convicted in December 2022 on three felony counts over the violent 2020 incident, in which he shot at the feet of Megan (real name Megan Pete) during an argument following a pool party at Kylie Jenner’s house in the Hollywood Hills. According to prosecutors, when Megan got out of the vehicle and began walking away, Lanez shouted “Dance, bitch!” and fired a gun at her feet. In August 2023, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Lanez has appealed his convictions to California’s Court of Appeal, arguing that the judge allowed improper testimony and evidence, resulting in a “a miscarriage of justice.” He’s also filed a so-called petition for writ of habeas corpus, a more drastic legal method for challenging a criminal conviction.
Last week’s false news stories came after Lanez filed yet another habeas corpus petition on Oct. 23. According to a copy of the filing obtained by Billboard, Lanez’s lawyers say the gun used in the shooting and bullet fragments that doctors removed from Megan’s foot have not been made available to him, meaning he “does not have the ability to conduct a full investigation.”
On Monday, Spiro directly rebutted the claims made in the new petition, saying he had confirmed with prosecutors that Lanez’s team was still able to access the evidence. “The statement that the gun and magazine are not available for testing is a complete and demonstrable lie,” Spiro said. “They are sitting there and available any time.”
After Lanez’s lawyers filed the new petition, the appeals court issued a brief order on Friday alerting the parties that it had “read and considered the petition” and that the new habeas challenge would be “considered together” along with the earlier appeals. Such a scheduling order was unremarkable, and was in no way a substantive ruling on the merits of Lanez’s arguments.
It was a screenshot of this order that was included in the false stories that circulated on social media. This was despite the fact that the order made no mention of “innocence,” and even expressly ordered prosecutors to file their own response brief in the weeks ahead – another clear sign that it was a procedural order, not a decision on the case.
Part of the confusion might have stemmed from the way Lanez’s attorneys announced the order. In an Instagram post on Friday, his lawyers at the group Unite The People posted a screenshot of the order under a caption that said the appeals court had just “ACCEPTED TORY LANEZ ACTUAL INNOCENCE CLAIM!!!” That statement was seemingly a reference to the legal term “actual innocence,” a form of criminal defense that they advanced in their petition.
A short time after Unite The People’s post, the tweet from Akademiks TV claiming Lanez had been ruled “innocent” appeared on X, featuring the same image with a watermark reading “United The People Inc.” Lanez’s lawyers, Crystal Morgan and Michael Hayden, did not return a request for comment on Tuesday.
Beyoncé’s attorneys are once again asking federal regulators to register Blue Ivy Carter’s name as a trademark, more than 12 years after she and Jay-Z first sought to lock up the intellectual property rights to their daughter’s name.
In a motion filed last week at the federal trademark office, lawyers for Beyoncé’s company pushed back on a ruling earlier this year that consumers might confuse the name with another Blue Ivy: a single-store clothing boutique in Wisconsin that has used the name since before the young Carter was born.
The star’s lawyers say that ruling should be overturned, arguing that nobody is going to confuse Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s daughter — once dubbed the “most famous baby in the world” — with a small clothing shop.
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“No reasonable consumer would ever suffer any form of confusion when encountering the [store’s] logo, which is used with one small shop in Fish Creek, Wisconsin, an unincorporated community with a population of approximately 997 people,” Beyoncé’s attorneys write. “Nor would a reasonable consumer encounter the ‘Blue Ivy Carter’ mark and conclude that the famous Carter family had teamed up with a small shop in rural Wisconsin to launch a clothing line.”
An attorney for Beyoncé’s company did not immediately return a request for comment on the status of the trademark case.
Just weeks after Blue Ivy was born in January 2012, Beyoncé’s BGK Trademark Holdings LLC applied at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to register her unusual name as a trademark. The move raised eyebrows at the time, as fans wondered if the couple was commercializing their daughter. But Jay-Z later told Vanity Fair that they merely wanted to prevent her name from being exploited by others.
“People wanted to make products based on our child’s name, and you don’t want anybody trying to benefit off your baby’s name,” he told the magazine in 2013. “It wasn’t for us to do anything; as you see, we haven’t done anything.”
More than 12 years later, however, Blue Ivy’s parents have yet to secure that trademark registration.
For years, the process was bogged down in legal disputes with a woman named Veronica Morales, who runs a lifestyle event planning company under the name “Blue Ivy” and secured her own trademark to it. In 2020, a tribunal at the USPTO rejected Morales’ complaints, ruling that the two sides’ respective offerings were “so dissimilar that confusion is unlikely.”
That ruling seemingly cleared the way for the “Blue Ivy Carter” trademark registration to finally be issued. But attorneys for BGK never moved that application forward, and eventually, the USPTO deemed the application abandoned last year.
In November 2023, Beyoncé’s attorneys applied yet again for the same trademark registration. Like previous efforts, however, the new application quickly hit a roadblock: In April, a trademark examiner issued a tentative ruling that the mark was “confusingly similar” to the name of the Wisconsin clothing store, which has owned a trademark registration on its “Blue Ivy” logo since 2011.
(The Wisconsin boutique itself is not actually involved in the case and has not filed an opposition to the Blue Ivy Carter trademark; instead, the USPTO simply cited the earlier trademark as a reason to deny Beyoncé’s application.)
It was this tentative denial that Beyoncé’s attorneys challenged last week, arguing that Americans know who Blue Ivy Carter is and would never think she was “somehow connected to a lovely boutique shop in a small town in rural Wisconsin.”
“Since the moment she was born, she has resided in the American public’s conscience and thus … the consuming public would associate her with a trademark bearing her name,” BGK’s lawyers write. “The parties each exist and thrive in their own separate worlds and can continue doing so into the future.”
Forest Hills Stadium‘s legal battle with the community’s homeowners association is one step closer to resolution.
On Oct. 21, Justice Joseph J. Esposito dismissed five of seven causes that the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation (FHGC) alleged in a 2023 lawsuit filed against the The West Side Tennis Club, which owns the stadium, in New York Supreme Court – Queens County. The lawsuit seeks to shut down the summer concert program at the former site of the U.S. Open, which is run by respected live-music veteran Mike Luba.
Among the causes of action dismissed by Judge Esposito: claims that the concert series was a violation of the tennis club’s contract with the FHGC, which owns the streets, sidewalks and common areas of Forest Hills Gardens, and represents approximately 900 property owners (including the club); that the stadium was a zoning violation and that the club had unjustly profited from the stadium’s growing success. It hosted a single concert when it re-opened in 2013; in 2024, that number totaled approximately 30, including shows by Neil Young and Crazy Horse, The National, The War on Drugs, Khruangbin, Tiësto, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Pitbull. And in early June, Hozier sold out four nights — a first in the stadium’s 101-year history.
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Hozier performs at Forest Hills Stadium on June 4, 2024 in Queens, NY.
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Judge Esposito dismissed all but FHGC’s public and private nuisance claims, but he did not find in FHGC’s favor on the merits of the nuisance claims. He merely held that they had stated a claim sufficient to survive the motion to dismiss, which they now must prove through discovery. (A future court date has not been set.)
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In a statement, Forest Hills Stadium’s attorney Akiva Shapiro said, “Forest Hills Stadium, an iconic and popular venue that anchors New York’s vibrant live music scene, has poured tremendous resources into being a good neighbor. We are gratified that the Court dismissed the vast majority of the claims and made clear that concerts at the Stadium are authorized under the relevant legal documents. We are confident that the remaining claims will also be dismissed.”
The Forest Hills Gardens Corp’s attorney Christopher Rizzo also responded to the decision in a statement: “Judge Esposito denied the [West Side Tennis] Club’s efforts to dismiss FHGC’s May 16, 2023 complaint, preserved important claims and dismissed others. We are pleased the judge has continued to recognize the serious nuisance created through noise code violations, FHGC’s loss of control of its indisputably private streets, trespass and other land-use harms. FHGC will continue to press forward in trial court. On claims that were dismissed, FHGC will consider its appeal options.”
Rizzo added: “As the court stated: ‘[FHGC] has proffered sufficient evidence that it suffers special injury from the loss of control of its private streets/sidewalks, the attendant financial costs to maintain those streets in light of the concerts and the large-scale pedestrian trespass that results from the events…[FHGC] succeeded in establishing public nuisance…as well as the documented evidence on noise levels from the stadium.”
Lil Durk ordered his OTF associates to murder rapper Quando Rondo in a failed 2022 shooting, according to criminal charges unsealed by federal prosecutors on Friday (Oct. 25) — and he was allegedly planning to take a private jet to Italy when he was arrested.
The Chicago rapper (real name Durk Devontay Banks) was arrested Thursday evening on a charge of conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, hours after several of his Only the Family associates were indicted on similar charges over their alleged involvement in the attempted killing of Rondo (Tyquian Bowman).
In a new complaint unsealed on Friday, prosecutors laid out their case against Durk (referred to as BANKS in the complaint) — accusing OTF of being not just a rap collective, but also a “hybrid organization” that also functions as a criminal gang that has carried out violent acts “at the direction of BANKS.”
Prosecutors say one of those acts was the 2022 attempted killing of Rondo, allegedly carried out in retaliation for the 2020 killing of rapper King Von (Dayvon Bennett), a close friend of Durk’s.
“BANKS put a monetary bounty out for an individual with whom BANKS was feuding named T.B.,” referring to Rondo by his initials. “BANKS ordered T.B.’s murder and that the hitmen used BANKS and OTF-related finances to carry out the murder.”
An attorney for Lil Durk did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday.
The charges came a day after Los Angeles federal prosecutors unsealed murder-for-hire and murder-for-hire conspiracy charges against several alleged OTF members — Kavon London Grant, Deandre Dontrell Wilson and Asa Houston – as well as two other alleged Chicago gang members named Keith Jones and David Brian Lindsey.
In both the new charges and the earlier indictment, prosecutors claim that the five men were behind the 2022 shooting. But in the new filings, they directly allege that Durk ordered the killing, saying it was retaliation for a 2020 Atlanta shooting in which a Rondo associate allegedly shot and killed Von.
“At the time of the murder, T.B. had a public feud with BANKS,” prosecutors write. “The feud stemmed from a Nov. 6, 2020, murder, where an associate of T.B. shot and killed an OTF rapper named Dayvon Bennett aka ‘King Von.’ Bennett was a member of OTF and BANKS’ close friend.”
The new filings also claim that Durk was planning to flee the country when he was arrested.
Prosecutors say that following the OTF arrests, they received notification that Durk had booked commercial flights to both Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and to Switzerland — flights that he never boarded. The FBI then allegedly learned that he had booked passage on a private jet to Italy, and Durk was arrested when he neared the departing airport for that flight.
King Von, a rising rapper in Chicago’s drill scene and a childhood friend of Durk, was shot and killed outside an Atlanta nightclub on Nov. 6, 2020, after an argument between two groups turned into a fight in the parking lot. A 22-year-old man named Timothy Leeks, reportedly an associate of Rondo, was arrested days later, but the case was eventually dropped.
Two years later, on Aug. 19, 2022, Rondo and associate Lul Pab (Saviay’a Robinson) were ambushed by gunmen while sitting in their car at a Los Angeles gas station. Rondo emerged unscathed, but Robinson later died at the hospital.
According to Thursday’s indictment, that killing was allegedly carried out by OTF members Grant, Wilson and Houston, as well as by Jones and Lindsey, who prosecutors say were “members of other gangs in Chicago.” They allege the group “used two vehicles to track, stalk and attempt to kill T.B. by gunfire — including with a fully automatic firearm — resulting in the death of S.R.”
In Friday’s complaint, prosecutors say the group carried out the attack on orders from Durk in retaliation for the earlier King Von slaying. They cite a text allegedly sent by Durk to another co-conspirator: “Don’t book no flights under no names involved wit me.”
According to prosecutors, the group used “a credit card associated with OTF” to buy plane tickets to fly to Los Angeles and rent a hotel room. Using two cars, including one with fake license plates, the group then tracked Rondo’s SUV through the city until they reached the gas station.
“Jones and Lindsey, and Co-Conspirator 2 used the firearms procured by defendant Grant — including the fully automatic firearm — to shoot at T.B.’s car, striking and killing S.R., who was standing next to T.B.’s car while T.B. was inside,” prosecutors write.
After fleeing the scene, prosecutors say the group later reconvened at a restaurant, where they hashed out payments for the crime. Later in the day, they allegedly used the same OTF-linked credit card to purchase plane tickets and fly back to Chicago.