Maverick City Music Co-Founder Accuses Group of Racketeering After Chandler Moore Lawsuit

Tony Brown, the co-founder of Maverick City Music, has deed the Grammy-winning worship corporate with racketeering claims implicit a buyout agreement, which helium says was the merchandise of threats and coercion by the group’s CEO and the member of ’90s hip-hop prima MC Hammer.

The allegations travel connected the heels of a bombshell fraud lawsuit brought against Maverick City Music by erstwhile subordinate Chandler Moore, who claims CEO Norman Gyamfi orchestrated concealed deals and forged Moore’s signature to bargain millions of dollars’ worthy of publishing royalties.

Brown and his ex-wife, Rebekah Aversano, person been pursuing their ain suit against the Atlanta-based radical since 2024 implicit buyout payments. The duo is present adding caller civilian claims that impeach Maverick City of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act — an organized transgression instrumentality typically deployed successful pack prosecutions similar the YSL case.

Brown and Aversano assertion that Gyamfi coerced Brown into signing an unfavorable buyout woody successful 2023 with the assistance of Louis Burrell, a euphony manufacture seasoned and the member of MC Hammer. According to tribunal filings, Burrell threatened to motorboat a “character assassination” and “bury” Brown’s household successful indebtedness unless Gyamfi’s preferred presumption were agreed to.

“Defendants participated successful and conducted the enterprise’s affairs done a signifier of racketeering enactment by committing astatine slightest 2 predicate acts chargeable nether the laws of the State of Georgia, including but not constricted to acts successful the quality of theft by deception, extortion and related offenses,” writes Brown and Aversano’s attorney, Gary Freed, successful a Friday (Oct. 17) amended complaint. “The predicate acts and related behaviour were (and are) portion of an ongoing strategy to get and support power implicit property, contractual rights, and wealth owed to plaintiffs.”

Freed is tying these civilian RICO claims to the royalty fraud suit filed by Moore connected Oct. 1. As helium writes successful the amended complaint, “Upon accusation and belief, defendants’ signifier of racketeering enactment besides harmed Chandler Moore.”

An lawyer for Gyamfi and Maverick City, Jordan Siev of the steadfast Reed Smith, says successful a Monday (Oct. 20) connection to Billboard that Brown and Aversano’s full suit is “baseless.”

“If necessary, we volition present facts that intelligibly volition demonstrate Mr. Brown’s and his ex-wife claims are meritless and successful information originate from Mr. Brown’s ain wrongful conduct,” adds Siev. “Their projected amendment to adhd a RICO assertion is the surest motion of desperation.”

Burrell did not instrumentality a petition for comment.

Maverick City and Gyamfi person antecedently denied that Brown’s buyout statement was the merchandise of coercion. In a tribunal filing successful April, the group’s lawyers said Brown’s ain lawyers negotiated the woody “on a level playing field” with Gyamfi.

“The alleged threats are not applicable due to the fact that passim the dialog process, Mr. Brown was represented by competent counsel,” wrote lawyer Mac Gibson at the time, adding that there’s nary grounds Burrell really worked for Maverick City.

Brown co-founded Maverick City successful 2018 alongside Jonathan Jay. The Atlanta-based euphony corporate has gone connected to triumph 5 Grammy Awards and apical the Billboard Christian and gospel charts with collaborations betwixt singers similar Moore, Naomi Raine and Brandon Lake.

Gyamfi joined Maverick City arsenic a part-owner and enforcement astir 2021 and helped turn Maverick City’s Christian euphony empire nether the holding institution Insignia Assets, including by establishing the statement TRIBL Records. According to tribunal filings, Brown decided successful 2023 to liquidate his Insignia shares to money his divorcement colony with Aversano. Gyamfi bought retired Brown for an undisclosed magnitude and agreed to wage him successful a bid of installments that would beryllium shared with Aversano.

But successful July 2024, Brown and Aversano sued Gyamfi and Insignia, alleging these installment payments had ne'er been completed. The suit said ...