According to the US Attorney’s office, the New York City bishop who was robbed of approximately $1 million in jewellery during a live-streamed service in July was arrested Monday morning and is facing fraud and extortion charges.
According to court documents, Lamor Whitehead, the pastor of Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries in Brooklyn’s Canarsie neighbourhood, was charged with two counts of wire fraud, one count of extortion, and one count of making material false statements to the FBI.
In one case, Whitehead, 45, is accused of convincing a parishioner to invest approximately $90,000 of her retirement savings with him under the guise that he would assist her in purchasing a home. Instead, he allegedly spent the money on “thousands of dollars of luxury goods and clothing.”
According to the court document, he is also accused of using threats of violence to obtain $5,000 from a New York businessman, which the businessman gave to Whitehead.
According to the US Attorney’s office, Whitehead also attempted to persuade the same businessman to lend him $500,000 and give him”interest in real estate transactions” in exchange for “favourable actions by the New York City government,” which he was unable to obtain.
Whitehead allegedly told FBI agents executing a search warrant that he only had one cell phone, when he actually had two.
“As we allege today, Lamor Whitehead abused the trust placed in him by a parishioner, bullied a businessman for $5,000, then tried to defraud him of far more than that, and lied to federal agents,” Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said. “His campaign of fraud and deceit stops now.”
According to court documents, Whitehead faces a minimum of 20 years in prison if convicted.
Dawn Florio, Whitehead’s attorney, denied the allegations. “Bishop Lamor Whitehead is not guilty of these charges. He will be vigorously defending these allegations. He feels that he is being targeted and being turned into a villain from a victim,”
In the summer, assailants stormed a live-streamed Sunday service and robbed Whitehead and his wife of $1 million in jewellery.
“When I saw them come in with their guns, I told everybody to get out, everybody just get out,” Whitehead said in an Instagram video at the time. “I wasn’t sure if they were planning to shoot up the church or if they were just looking for a robbery.”
In September, the bishop made headlines again when he was removed from his church by police after a video appeared to show him grabbing a woman and pushing her.
He was preaching in a Brooklyn church when someone in the audience began yelling inaudibly off-camera. He paused the service to respond.
“You wana come preach?” Near the end of the livestreamed service, he is heard saying. “Come on up here. I’m gonna make you famous.”
As a woman approaches him, video appears to show the bishop grabbing her hair by the back of her neck and pushing her off-camera.
The woman, identified as Tarsha Howard was charged with trespassing and disrupting a religious service. According to police, Whitehead was not arrested, but the bishop disagreed and said he was placed in a holding cell.
“You put me in prison and then let me out and say, ‘Oops, you made a mistake’?” he said in a video at the time. “But you don’t get to arrest me for no reason. I’m going to protect my family.”
