Chicago rapper Lil Durk was handcuffed in South Florida. He is accused of conspiracy to murder

Chicago rap superstar Lil Durk was arrested in South Florida in connection with a murder plot, court records show.

The 32-year-old Grammy-winning musician, whose real name is Durk Devontay Banks, was being held Friday morning at the Broward County Main Jail on behalf of the U.S. Marshal’s Service awaiting arraignment on a murder-for-hire charge, according to jail records.

It’s unclear why Banks was arrested in Broward. A representative for Banks could not immediately be reached for comment.

As Banks was taken into custody on Thursday, federal prosecutors in California announced the arrests of five additional people: Kavon London Grant, Deandre Dontrell Wilson, Keith Jones, David Brian Lindsey and Asa Houston – on charges of murder-for-hire, murder-for-hire conspiracy and use of a machine gun in a violent crime resulting in death.

The charges stem from the 2022 murder of Georgia rapper Quando Rondo’s cousin, Lul Pab, née Saviay’a Robinson, in Los Angeles. All of the suspects have ties to the hip-hop collective Only the Family, or OTF, a record label that Banks founded in 2010 around the same time the drill rap subgenre emerged. The subgenre is characterized by its monotonous lyrics that reference gang violence.

According to the indictment, the conspiracy targeted Quando Rondo, whose real name was Tyquian Terrel Bowman, in retaliation for his alleged involvement in the death of aspiring rapper King Von, also known as Dayvon Daquan Bennett, an “OTF” associate who was close to him , in 2020 Friends with Durk.

According to the indictment, the defendants were offered money and “lucrative music opportunities at OTF” in exchange for Bowman’s murder. A credit card linked to OTF was used to purchase airline tickets for a flight to California and murder Bowman, the indictment says.

Earlier this month, the mother of late rapper FBG Duck filed a lawsuit tying Lil Durk and the late King Von to the gang killing of her son on Chicago’s Gold Coast in August 2020. The lawsuit alleges that Duck, whose real name was Carlton Weekly, was shot dead by a masked assailant outside a Dolce & Gabbana store in broad daylight, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The lawsuit accused “OTF” of operating as a “criminal enterprise.”

Banks’ arrest on Thursday comes just a week after he was honored by Cook County, Illinois, for his efforts to support underserved communities in Chicago through his Neighborhood Heroes Foundation, which is also expected to send water and food shipments to Florida to assist in Hurricane Milton recovery efforts. The self-proclaimed “Voice of the Trenches” was given several keys to the city, including the Village of Broadview and Village of Bellwood.

In a September post on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, Banks celebrated learning that his criminal record had been expunged.

“Everyone should be given a second chance at life,” he wrote. “All the cases have disappeared from my background. I’m no longer a felon. Who would have thought?”