{"id":8246,"date":"2025-10-21T09:56:22","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T09:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/maverick-city-music-faces-rico-lawsuit-after-chandler-moore-claims\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T09:56:22","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T09:56:22","slug":"maverick-city-music-faces-rico-lawsuit-after-chandler-moore-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/maverick-city-music-faces-rico-lawsuit-after-chandler-moore-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"Maverick City Music Faces RICO Lawsuit After Chandler Moore Claims"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tTony Brown<\/strong>, the co-founder of Maverick City Music, has hit the Grammy-winning worship collective with racketeering claims over a buyout agreement, which he says was the product of threats and coercion by the group\u2019s CEO and the brother of \u201990s hip-hop star MC Hammer.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe allegations come on the heels of a bombshell fraud lawsuit brought against Maverick City Music by former member Chandler Moore, who claims CEO Norman Gyamfi <\/strong>orchestrated secret deals and forged Moore\u2019s signature to steal millions of dollars\u2019 worth of publishing royalties.<\/p>\n

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\n\tBrown and his ex-wife, Rebekah Aversano<\/strong>, have been pursuing their own lawsuit against the Atlanta-based group since 2024 over buyout payments. The duo is now adding new civil claims that accuse Maverick City of violating Georgia\u2019s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act \u2014 an organized crime law typically deployed in gang prosecutions like the YSL case.<\/p>\n

\n\tBrown and Aversano claim that Gyamfi coerced Brown into signing an unfavorable buyout deal in 2023 with the help of Louis Burrell<\/strong>, a music industry veteran and the brother of MC Hammer. According to court filings, Burrell threatened to launch a \u201ccharacter assassination\u201d and \u201cbury\u201d Brown\u2019s family in debt unless Gyamfi\u2019s preferred terms were agreed to.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDefendants participated in and conducted the enterprise\u2019s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity by committing at least two predicate acts chargeable under the laws of the State of Georgia, including but not limited to acts in the nature of theft by deception, extortion and related offenses,\u201d writes Brown and Aversano\u2019s attorney, Gary Freed<\/strong>, in a Friday (Oct. 17) amended complaint. \u201cThe predicate acts and related conduct were (and are) part of an ongoing scheme to obtain and maintain control over property, contractual rights, and money owed to plaintiffs.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tFreed is tying these civil RICO claims to the royalty fraud lawsuit filed by Moore on Oct. 1. As he writes in the amended complaint, \u201cUpon information and belief, defendants\u2019 pattern of racketeering activity also harmed Chandler Moore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAn attorney for Gyamfi and Maverick City, Jordan Siev <\/strong>of the firm Reed Smith, says in a Monday (Oct. 20) statement to Billboard<\/em> that Brown and Aversano\u2019s entire lawsuit is \u201cbaseless.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf necessary, we will present\u00a0facts that clearly will demonstrate\u00a0Mr. Brown\u2019s and his ex-wife claims are meritless and in fact arise from Mr. Brown\u2019s own wrongful conduct,\u201d adds Siev. \u201cTheir proposed amendment to add a RICO claim is the surest sign of desperation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBurrell did not return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tMaverick City and Gyamfi have previously denied that Brown\u2019s buyout agreement was the product of coercion. In a court filing in April, the group\u2019s lawyers said Brown\u2019s own lawyers negotiated the deal \u201con a level playing field\u201d with Gyamfi.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe alleged threats are not relevant because throughout the negotiation process, Mr. Brown was represented by competent counsel,\u201d wrote attorney Mac Gibson <\/strong>at the time, adding that there\u2019s no evidence Burrell actually worked for Maverick City.<\/p>\n

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\n\tBrown co-founded Maverick City in 2018 alongside Jonathan Jay<\/strong>. The Atlanta-based music collective has gone on to win five Grammy Awards and top the Billboard<\/em> Christian and gospel charts with collaborations between singers like Moore, Naomi Raine and Brandon Lake.<\/p>\n

\n\tGyamfi joined Maverick City as a part-owner and executive around 2021 and helped grow Maverick City\u2019s Christian music empire under the holding company Insignia Assets, including by establishing the label TRIBL Records. According to court filings, Brown decided in 2023 to liquidate his Insignia shares to fund his divorce settlement with Aversano. Gyamfi bought out Brown for an undisclosed amount and agreed to pay him in a series of installments that would be shared with Aversano.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in July 2024, Brown and Aversano sued Gyamfi and Insignia, alleging these installment payments had never been completed. The lawsuit said Gyamfi had justified the underpayment by citing sexual harassment claims made against Brown by a female former executive at TRIBL Records.<\/p>\n

\n\tBrown denies engaging in sexual harassment, and he says Maverick City is just using the claims as a \u201cpretext\u201d to violate the buyout contract. The female former TRIBL executive has not brought any lawsuits herself or otherwise publicized sexual harassment claims against Brown or the company.<\/p>\n

\n\tMaverick City has since undergone some major changes, with Moore and fellow flagship member Raine both announcing earlier this month that they were leaving the collective to focus on solo projects.<\/p>\n

\n\tMoore accompanied his exit with legal claims over alleged royalty fraud, which Maverick City has denied as \u201cwildly untrue.\u201d Jay, the co-founder, wrote in a lengthy Instagram statement that Moore\u2019s claims are merely \u201ccalculated attempts to strong-arm a way out of agreements Chandler made freely and later breached.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTo be clear: the claims being made against me, against Norman and against our companies are categorically false,\u201d wrote Jay. \u201cOur business dealings with Chandler were forthright, generous and above reproach. We acted in good faith, gave more than what was required and consistently extended grace. Any allegations of misdeeds are simply not true, and we welcome a full and honest examination, because the truth will speak for itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Billboard<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tony Brown, the co-founder of Maverick City Music, has hit the Grammy-winning worship collective with racketeering claims over a buyout agreement, which he says was the product of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6857,384,300,458,303,6855,2092,593,2513],"class_list":["post-8246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-chandler","tag-city","tag-claims","tag-faces","tag-lawsuit","tag-maverick","tag-moore","tag-music","tag-rico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}