NYC’s ‘Bling Bishop’ Lamor Whitehead sentenced to 9 years in prison for multiple scams

NEW YORK — Lamor Whitehead, the politically connected Brooklyn pastor and self-described mentee of New York Mayor Eric Adams dubbed the “Bling Bishop” for his flamboyant lifestyle, was sentenced to nine years in prison Monday for swindling a parishioner’s mother out of her life savings and other scams.

Manhattan Federal Court Judge Lorna Schofield handed down the term after hearing from financially destroyed victims. She also heard a final sermon from Whitehead, who waxed lyrical about “wisdom, integrity and love” and name-dropped a laundry list of city and state officials he’d dealt with — including the mayor, state Attorney General Letitia James, NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey and others, none of whom were in attendance.

Schofield, who also ordered Whitehead to pay $85,000 in restitution and forfeit $95,000, said Whitehead’s crimes were dishonest, “any one” of which “would warrant a substantial sentence.”

“I know you stated you’re remorseful, but I don’t see any remorse for your conduct,” Schofield said.

Schofield said she’d read letters praising Whitehead’s positive impact as a church leader and a father, but she said they didn’t erase his fraud. She described the evidence as “frankly overwhelming” in one of the schemes that saw him submit fraudulent applications to obtain millions of dollars in loans, said she believed he’d perjured himself when he took the stand, and that she was troubled by the nature of his crimes mirroring those he was convicted of decades ago.

“You don’t seem to have an appreciation of the impact of your crimes or, in some ways, the facts,” the judge said.

A jury on March 11 convicted Whitehead of wire fraud, attempted extortion, lying to the FBI, and other charges for a series of schemes starting in 2018 that saw him bilk tens of thousands of dollars from unsuspecting victims.

Jurors heard from Pauline Anderson, who said Whitehead convinced her son, a volunteer at his church, Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries in Canarsie, Brooklyn, to trust him with at least $85,000 of her retirement savings to buy and renovate a fixer-upper home. The feds presented evidence showing the preacher spent the cash on designer clothing, his BMW, GrubHub and Foot Locker.

Anderson, 58, in court Monday, said Whitehead’s theft of her savings had led to emotional, physical and financial turmoil, telling the court, “What I was left with was nothing.”

In asking the judge to impose a substantial sentence, Assistant U.S. Attorney Derek Wikstrom said Whitehead — who’s been convicted five times — was a con man who abused his churchgoers’ trust and carried out his crimes as part of a pattern that continued throughout the trial and reflected “how calculated this was.”

The prosecutor said Whitehead’s remorse was so lacking that he continued to torment his victims in lawsuits to silence them and shift the blame in an “abuse of the legal system.”

“He purports to be a religious leader while stealing from people,” Wikstrom said. “It’s outrageous.”