Lil Durk Ordered Quando Rondo’s Murder, Feds Say — and Was Planning to Flee Country When Arrested

Newly unsealed court documents lay out the case against Durk, who prosecutors allege was the leader of a "hybrid" of a rap collective and a criminal street gang

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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.

The charges unveiled this week detail a beef between Durk and Rondo dating back to Nov. 6, 2020, when Von was killed outside an Atlanta nightclub following an argument between two groups of men. Timothy Leeks, a reported associate of Rondo, was arrested days later, but the case was eventually dropped.

Nearly two years after Von’s killing, Rondo and associate Lul Pab (Saviay’a Robinson) were ambushed by gunmen while sitting in their car at a Los Angeles gas station. Rondo was unharmed, but Robinson (reportedly the rapper’s cousin) later died at a nearby hospital.

In the new filings this week, prosecutors allege that the 2022 attack was carried out by OTF members Grant, Wilson and Houston, as well as by Jones and Lindsey, who prosecutors describe as “members of other gangs in Chicago.”

In Friday’s complaint, prosecutors made explicit the allegations they had only alluded to in the earlier filings: That the group had carried out the attack on orders from Durk, doing so in retaliation for the earlier King Von slaying. Among other claims, the documents cite a text allegedly sent by Durk to another co-conspirator in the lead up to the shooting: “Don’t book no flights under no names involved wit me.”

Those flights to Los Angeles were booked with “a credit card associated with OTF,” prosecutors say, and the same card was used to rent a hotel room for the assailants. The card was allegedly issued under a bank account that listed Durk’s one-time manager as an owner, the government claims, and another credit card was issued under the same account to Durk’s father.

The feds allege that the group — using two cars, including one with fake license plates — then “worked in tandem to track, stalk, and attempt to murder T.B. at a gas station located in Los Angeles.” During the attack, they allegedly “fired at least 18 rounds at T.B.’s vehicle,” several of which struck and killed Robinson.

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.