‘Bling Bishop’ Lamor Whitehead found guilty of fraud including ripping off parishioner’s mom

New York Daily News, The (NY)

“Bling Bishop” Lamor Whitehead was convicted at his Manhattan trial Monday of stealing the life savings of a parishioner’s mother and perpetrating other schemes — falsely claiming along the way that Mayor Adams had given him “the key to the city” to carry out his fraud.

Jurors found Whitehead, 45, guilty of five counts, including wire fraud, attempted extortion, lying to the FBI and related charges stemming from three separate schemes after deliberating for just a few hours in Manhattan Federal Court.

“We are appealing the verdict,” Whitehead’s lawyer, Dawn Florio, said in brief remarks.

The headline-grabbing pastor, whom Adams has described as a mentee, had pleaded not guilty to all charges. He could not immediately be reached for comment.

But he gave a teary-eyed soliloquy the day before the verdict.

“This is a time where we rejoice in the Lord; this is not a time to be sad. I know I got choked up a little bit, but just thinking about the goodness, not thinking about the badness, it was the goodness,” Whitehead rambled toward the end of a live-streamed sermon on Sunday, wiping tears from his eyes.

“There are always going to be people who wish on your downfall,” he continued. “But just understand that God will step up. Don’t worry about tomorrow because we know who holds tomorrow. Amen.”

Jurors heard during the trial how Whitehead targeted the single mom of one of his parishioners at Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries in Canarsie, Brooklyn. That woman, Pauline Anderson, was targeted along with a money lending company and Bronx businessman Brandon Belmonte.

“The defendant was trusted by many in his community. He was the bishop of a small church in Brooklyn and a self-described businessman. He was a friend to the mayor of New York City,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Greenwood said last month in the government’s opening statements.

“The defendant abused that trust by lying again and again.”

When she took the stand, Anderson emotionally told jurors about trusting Whitehead — a “mentor and spiritual adviser” to her son — to invest $90,000 of her life savings accumulated during her career as a nurse. The pastor claimed he would use the proceeds to buy and renovate a fixer-upper home. After being refused a bank loan, she said the investment was his idea and that the preacher had presided over her son Rasheed Anderson’s wedding and introduced him to contacts who helped him secure his own home.

“I trusted him,” an emotional Anderson testified Feb. 27. “He said he had real estate experience. He was a man of God — he prayed for me in earnest. I believe in God, so I believed he would honestly help me to get this house.”

Trial evidence showed that Whitehead, previously convicted of identity theft, spent the cash on himself, with the funds going to designer clothing, his BMW, GrubHub, Foot Locker and other lavish purchases.

As the victim’s son tried to get back his mom’s savings, Whitehead, in a text, said he was “asking God to exact vengeance on him,” Anderson told jurors on the trial’s second day.

In a second scheme, the feds described how Whitehead used his ties to the mayor to squeeze Belmonte, the Bronx businessman, for a $500,000 real estate investment. In an intercepted conversation, Whitehead told Belmonte that Adams — whom he referred to as “E” — was his “key to the city” and could help them with lifting stop-work orders on a property the pastor and Belmonte were talking about buying together.

The mayor was not accused of wrongdoing in the case. The feds stressed from the outset that Whitehead’s promises of mayoral help were false.

Adams’ campaign is under federal investigation, with several close allies having their homes raided in recent months.

After the pastor’s testimony — in which he claimed that an FBI agent had pressured him to “help us get the mayor of New York,” according to The New York Times — the prosecution said Whitehead lied during his time on the stand.

The mayor has known the crooked pastor since the pol’s days as Brooklyn borough president and appeared with him at multiple official events, introducing Whitehead as his “good friend” at a 2016 concert. The defendant, who mounted a failed 2021 campaign to succeed Adams as Brooklyn borough president, has said he considers the mayor his “mentor” and “brother.”

In yet another fraud of which Whitehead was convicted, evidence showed that he drew up phony bank statements to get a $250,000 loan — purporting to show he had millions in a company account that had less than $6.

Whitehead abruptly started making city headlines after Adams took office in January 2022. Along with unsuccessfully trying to facilitate the surrender of an accused subway killer in May 2022 — drawing authorities’ wrath — Whitehead himself was robbed in a caught-on-camera stickup at one of his services last June.

Whitehead could face up to 45 years in prison when sentenced on July 1. A spokesman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams declined to comment.

With Chris Sommerfeldt