‘Bling Bishop’ Lamor Whitehead convicted of frauds including ripping off parishioner’s mom

NEW YORK — “Bling Bishop” Lamor Whitehead was convicted Monday of stealing the life savings of a parishioner’s mother and other fraudulent schemes at his Manhattan trial.

Jurors found Whitehead, 46, guilty of wire fraud, attempted extortion, lying to the FBI and related charges stemming from three separate schemes after a trial that lasted just two weeks in Manhattan Federal Court.

The charges carry up to 45 years in prison.

Whitehead, a self-described “mentee” of Mayor Eric Adams who’d pleaded not guilty to all charges, could not immediately be reached for comment.

“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 in last month in opening remarks at Manhattan Federal Court.

“The defendant abused that trust by lying again and again. He lied about how much money he had. He lied about his business plans. And he lied about having influence with powerful people. All with the goal of getting money and property to fund his extravagant lifestyle.”

Whitehead, who ran a Canarsie, Brooklyn, church called Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries, targeted the elderly single mom of one of his parishioners, along with a money lending company and a Bronx businessman.

“The defendant convinced this woman, who had spent her career working as a nurse, to give him $90,000 of her life savings,” Greenwood said Feb. 26. “He promised to use the money to buy a fixer-upper home that he would renovate for her to live in. And she believed the defendant — a man, who by that time, had become a mentor and spiritual adviser to her son.”

The headline-grabbing pastor instead spent the cash on himself, with the funds going to designer clothing and a BMW payment.

As the victim’s son tried to get back his mom’s savings, Whitehead said in a text he was asking God to “exact vengeance” upon the man.

A second scheme saw Whitehead threaten the owner of an auto body shop in the Bronx, Brandon Belmonte, attempting to extort him for $5,000 after a repair job. Prosecutors said Whitehead further lied to Belmonte to attempt to get his name on a $500,000 real estate deal, promising favors from Adams in exchange that could make them millions.

In a third plot, Whitehead, who was arrested in December, 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.

A spokesman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams declined to comment.

Whitehead abruptly started making city headlines after Adams, who’s not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with the pastor’s case, 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.

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