The federal murder-for-hire case against Lil Durk underwent a major change early last month, when prosecutors unveiled a superseding indictment that added racketeering charges to the mix. The rapper’s lawyers immediately objected, asking the judge to either throw out the racketeering charges entirely or, failing that, to move them to a separate trial, after the murder-for-hire counts go in front of a jury.
To understand why this latest turn in the case is such a big deal, and why Durk is fighting against it so hard, we took a close look at what exactly the new racketeering charges are about. At the center of everything are two long-ago incidents (one in early 2022 and one dating all the way back to 2019) that may now play a big part in this case.
What is a superseding indictment?
A superseding indictment is an updated version of the charges against a defendant or multiple defendants in a criminal case. Charges are frequently modified throughout the lifespan of complicated cases, which often run for years. Sometimes this is because more people are arrested and added to the case, or plead guilty and leave it. Sometimes it’s because new evidence is discovered during an investigation. And sometimes the charges are updated to reflect a new theory of the case. A combination of the last two of these reasons seems to be the case with Durk. The last one in particular, if his lawyers are to be believed, presents a big problem. But more on that later.
What does this new indictment add?
The superseding indictment, issued on June 3, adds two counts, listed as Count One and Count Six. Count One accuses Durk and a number of people around him, including the other co-defendants in the case, of being an “enterprise.” That enterprise, in turn, is accused of engaging in racketeering.
There are two main buckets of offenses the alleged enterprise is accused of. One centers around murder: conspiracy to commit murder, murder, and attempted murder. The second involves drug trafficking.
The main idea of the first, murder-centric bucket is that, per the indictment, Durk would place bounties on people he or other people in his crew wanted to kill. Then other enterprise members would attempt to kill them, and be rewarded with not just money, but other perks like appearances in Durk and OTF videos, jewelry, and “lucrative music opportunities.”
There is less information provided about the second, drug trafficking bucket of alleged offenses. The main thing alleged is that Durk “funded the purchase of controlled substances for distribution in, among other places, Chicago and Georgia” in order to secure loyalty from the members of his crew.
So that’s Count One: Durk allegedly runs an enterprise, and that enterprise engages in racketeering via (1) violence against rivals and (2) drug trafficking. All of this means that Durk is now charged with violating what’s sometimes called the VICAR (Violent Crimes in Aid of Racketeering activity) statute. So if you hear “VICAR” being thrown around, that’s what it is referring to.
Then there’s Count Six. That one specifically involves the crime Durk and his co-defendants have always been accused of, an alleged murder-for-hire plot aimed at Quando Rondo, but that ended up killing Rondo’s cousin, Saviay'a Robinson, instead. Except that this time there’s an additional factor: they call the killing a “murder in aid of racketeering.” Prosecutors have always argued that Durk ordered the hit, and rewarded the people who participated with things like cash and appearances in his videos. Now they’re saying that he did that as part of a criminal enterprise.
What evidence is there that Durk is part of an enterprise?
This is the point at which old cases get brought back up — something that Durk vehemently objects to. Prosecutors point specifically to two old cases, one from 2019 and one from early 2022, just seven months before Saviay'a Robinson was killed. Prosecutors say that these two incidents demonstrate clearly that Durk is in charge of a criminal gang, and that he offers rewards in exchange for violence.
2019: Atlanta
The 2019 incident is a shooting in Atlanta that allegedly involved both Durk and King Von. Prosecutors’ story is that Durk’s crew was upset with a man named Anthony Weatherspoon, who sold one of them a stolen car. When Weatherspoon refused to refund the purchaser’s money, the crew member robbed him, taking his chain, $30,000, and the car. The person who allegedly committed the robbery died in October, 2025.
After the robbery, members of Durk’s crew, including both Durk and King Von, allegedly shot at Weatherspoon, hitting him in the leg.
Durk and Von were actually both arrested for this at the time. A police detective even said in court that he saw video of Durk shooting during the incident, and that there were eyewitnesses who saw both Durk and Von at the scene.
Ultimately, nothing ever came of the case for the two rappers. Von, of course, was killed the following year. Charges against Durk were ultimately dropped in 2022. One possible reason Durk wasn’t charged is that the same police detective who testified about the video of Durk also said that Weatherspoon may have fired the first shot. So it seems possible Georgia authorities may have concluded that Durk had a reasonable claim to be acting in self-defense.
2022: Chicago
The second incident, from early 2022, has a more involved backstory. For this one, you need to know a little bit about street gangs in Chicago. Since the mid-1970s, there have been two warring gangs in Chicago: the Black Disciples (BDs) and the Gangster Disciples (GDs). The feud is so long-running, and so vicious, that it has its own Wikipedia page.
Prosecutors say that Durk is on the Black Disciples side of the divide. They claim that Durk’s brother Dontay Banks, Jr., a/k/a “DThang,” was shot and killed in June, 2021 by a member of a faction of GDs known as Dump Street.
So, the theory continues, when DThang was killed, Durk began “offering money for people to kill those responsible for his brother’s murder, and more specifically, offering to pay money for any Gangster Disciple that is killed.”
That bounty, prosecutors say, ultimately led to the murder of Stephon Mack. Mack was allegedly a leader in a set of GDs called Smashville, and had ties to Dump Street.
Durk was never charged for Mack’s murder. However, the two people who killed him sent texts to each other about Durk and OTF, and appeared to discuss payment from Durk for the killing. A related fact is that both men who pleaded guilty to the killing admitted to doing it in exchange for the promise of money. In fact, they admitted outright that there had been a cash bounty for Mack’s murder.
Both of Mack’s killers had connections to the BDs. One, Anthony Montgomery-Wilson, is, per police, a member of the Mike City faction of the Black Disciples. The other, Preston “Marley” Powell, had more tenuous ties — he lived for a while in Mike City territory.
The direct Durk connection is that, about two weeks after killing Mack (in a sad detail, he was shot as he was walking out of a “Youth Peace Center” in Chicago), they began, according to an agent investigating the case, texting each other about Durk, OTF, and money. All of this information is from an affidavit given by an FBI agent in April, 2023.
Here is their exchange:
2/10/2022 at 2:43pm: from Powell to Montgomery-Wilson: “Wassup with otf”
2/10/2022 at 2:45pm: from Montgomery-Wilson to Powell: “Nothing”
2/10/2022 at 2:46pm: from Powell to Montgomery-Wilson: “Wym they not paying”
Then they discuss that Durk is coming to Chicago on Feb. 17.
2/10/2022 at 2:46pm: Montgomery-Wilson to Powell: “We waiting he comes up here on the 17th”
On the 17th, the conversation continues, with Powell (per the FBI agent’s interpretation) insisting on getting paid:
2/17/2022 at 7:21pm: from Powell to Montgomery-Wilson: “Stand on that why u with Durk nem”
Then Powell follows up with the most direct mention yet.
2/18/2022 at 9:48am: From Powell to Montgomery-Wilson: “Did durk gave u that money”
Right around this time, Durk appears on Gillie and Wallo’s Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast — an interview where he was toting around a million dollars in cash. While the FBI agent giving the affidavit never outright says it, it’s clear that he intends to draw a connection between that money and the bounty for the Mack murder, which the agent’s sources put at anywhere between $50,000 to $500,000.
To reiterate, while Powell and Montgomery-Wilson did plead guilty to killing Mack in exchange for the promise of money, and while they did admit to a cash bounty for the murder, neither mentioned Durk (or anyone else) in particular, and Durk was never charged for Mack’s murder. Durk’s lawyers also say that there are “no direct witnesses” and that the case against their client is built on “circumstantial evidence.”
However, prosecutors in Durk’s current case say they have a jailhouse confession from someone involved in Mack’s murder about the motive for the killing, and about “collecting payment from Banks Gang Enterprise members and associates” for it.
How are Durk’s lawyers reacting to all of this?
Unsurprisingly, Durk’s lawyers are not happy about this old stuff being brought up so late in the game, just weeks before his planned trial date of August 20. As mentioned, they filed a motion asking for the racketeering aspect of the case either to be thrown out entirely or, failing that, tried separately from (and later than) the murder-for-hire charges.
Their argument hinges on several points. First: that the government said back in February of this year that it was taking Mack’s killing “off the table,” but now is putting it back into play with just a few months left before trial.
Similarly, they argue, prosecutors could have included the 2019 incident, and the accusation that Durk ran a drug trafficking ring, “from the start.” In fact, the 2019 and 2022 incidents were both addressed in court proceedings back in late 2024, but were not added to the charges until June, 2026. And in February of this year, prosecutors actually said, “We are not inclined at this time to introduce” evidence about the 2022 incident into the case. Evidence about the Atlanta case was not introduced until February of this year, and it wasn’t until May that prosecutors made clear their plans of introducing evidence about both incidents into the case.
The fact that prosecutors are adding all of this evidence now, Durk’s team says, is essentially forcing Durk to push back the trial’s start date, and thus robbing him of his right to a speedy trial.
“In other words,” they write, “the government had access to most (if not all) of the evidence supporting the VICAR counts months ago. It should be required to tell the Court why it did not supersede then, and why Mr. Banks’ trial date may potentially be disturbed as a result.” They are very concerned about prosecutors “sandbagging” the defense “by switching its…theories” right before the trial is about to start.
In a statement to the press, Durk’s attorneys called bringing up the 2019 and 2022 incident “recycling old accusations” into a “backup plan: allege racketeering and as many unrelated false claims as possible.” Hidden just underneath the surface of both the motion and their press statement is a not-explicitly-stated but certainly implied question: if there’s all this evidence connecting Durk to the killing of Stephon Mack and the shooting of Anthony Weatherspoon, why was he never charged for either of those crimes?
In a new filing on Monday (July 13), Durk’s attorneys say that the government is “intentionally” attempting to push their client’s trial date back in “a transparent attempt to delay justice.” In fact, they go one step further and accuse the government of acting like the trial has already been delayed. They say that prosecutors are forcing this delay just to gain a “tactical advantage.” They mention one such possible advantage: prosecutors getting additional witnesses to testify (the lawyers cite Powell and Montgomery-Wilson as hypothetical examples) who wouldn’t have been available if the case had been tried when originally planned.
What was the government’s defense?
The government responded by saying that its investigation involved sorting through “voluminous digital records,” including material from 59 different digital devices and accounts, most of which they only got access to after Durk’s arrest. By implication, they also tie the timing of the superseding indictment to Montgomery-Wilson and Powell’s guilty pleas, which took place in April and May, respectively, of 2026. They say that holding two trials, one with the enterprise allegations and one without, “would deprive the jury of a complete understanding of the alleged gang enterprise, including how and why the [Robinson] murder occurred.”
Also, they say that the fact that the new indictment came down so late is largely the fault of Durk and his co-defendants themselves, since they went out of their way to make evidence hard to find.
“Defendants went to great lengths to conceal their criminality: they used coded language when discussing their criminal conduct; they used — and disposed of — multiple burner phones; they worked to identify and intimidate witnesses who could (or would) cooperate against them; and they would delete and destroy evidence that could incriminate them,” they write.
What’s next?
The next step in the case happens on Tuesday (July 14) at 10 a.m. At that point, the judge in Durk’s case will hear in-person arguments from both sides about Durk and his co-defendants’ request to throw out entirely or separate the racketeering aspects of the case. The judge will likely issue a decision at some point shortly after that. If he decides not to throw out the racketeering aspects of the case, it appears all but certain that Durk and his codefendants will ask for the trial to be delayed, perhaps for as long as a full year.
