Grammy winner Lil Durk charged with murder-for-hire near Beverly Center mall

Grammy-winning rapper Lil Durk was arrested by U.S. marshals in Florida on Thursday on charges of conspiring to kill a rival artist as part of a murder plot, authorities said.

The 32-year-old rapper, whose legal name is Durk Devontay Banks, was arrested near the Miami airport and held at the Broward County Jail, where he is being held without bail, according to federal officials.

Banks is accused of ordering the murder of Tyquian Bowman, a Georgia rapper known as Quando Rondo, whose cousin was killed in a botched ambush near the Beverly Center mall in Los Angeles in 2022.

In an affidavit filed in federal court, FBI Special Agent Sarah Corcoran alleged that Banks put a bounty on Bowman's head after an associate of Bowman's killed a rapper associated with Banks' music group.

Dayvon Bennett, a Chicago artist who performed as King Von, was shot and killed outside an Atlanta nightclub in 2020. Bennett was a close friend of Banks and associated with his music group Only The Family. Corcoran described Only The Family, or OTF, as a “hybrid organization” that blurred the line between a music collective and a gang.

Citing unnamed witnesses and “open source reporting,” Corcoran claimed that Banks had put a “bounty” on Bowman’s head.

On August 18, 2022 – a year and a half after Bennett's murder – OTF members learned that Bowman was staying at a hotel in Los Angeles, Corcoran wrote. Five men booked one-way flights from Chicago to San Diego. According to Corcoran, someone using Banks' iCloud account texted the person who purchased the tickets, “Do not book flights under any name associated with me.”

Banks flew from Miami to Los Angeles on a private jet with a man named Kavon Grant, Corcoran wrote. Grant used Banks' credit card to book a room at the Sheraton Universal Hotel, where the five-person hit team stayed the night before tracking down Bowman, according to the agent's affidavit. Banks lived in a rented house in Encino.

According to an indictment, Grant purchased ski masks at a sporting goods store and distributed weapons to the response team, including a weapon that had been modified for automatic fire. He is also said to have delivered them a rented BMW sedan and an Infiniti sedan with fake license plates.

Driving in both cars, the hit team tracked Bowman to a hotel in downtown Los Angeles the next day, the indictment says. Bowman left with his cousin Saviay'a Robinson in a black Cadillac Escalade. The two cars pursued the Escalade to a marijuana dispensary and then to a clothing store on Melrose Avenue.

After Bowman pulled into a gas station near the Beverly Center, three armed men wearing ski masks got out of the Infiniti. Robinson, who was standing in front of the Escalade, was shot. Bowman survived.

A few hours later, the five-person hit team was on a flight back to Chicago, Corcoran wrote in her affidavit.

Agents arrested the suspected shooters in Chicago and searched their homes on Thursday. The FBI subsequently received an alert from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol that Banks had booked one-way flights to Dubai and Switzerland scheduled for that night, Corcoran wrote. He was also listed as a passenger on a private plane to Italy.

In an indictment unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, OTF members Kavon London Grant, Deandre Dontrell Wilson, Keith Jones, David Brian Lindsey and Asa Houston were charged with the conspiracy.