Bishop Lamor Whitehead Sentenced To 9 Years

It has been a wild journey for Bishop Lamor Whitehead, aka Grand Pastor Flash, the holy rolling reverend who went viral in 2022 when he was robbed at gunpoint on the Leaders of Tomorrow Worldwide Ministries church in Brooklyn whereas delivering a Sunday sermon that was dwell streamed. Some individuals believed the theft was staged and that Whitehead was a scammer who had developed a status for flim-flamming parishioners out of their hard-earned cash to be able to dwell a lifetime of luxurious.

Whitehead even filed lawsuits towards fashionable YouTubers who have been spreading the phrase about him being an ungodly grifter. Effectively, in keeping with g to the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace for the Southern District of New York, Whitehead is each bit the scammer he was rumored to be, and that’s why he has simply been sentenced to 9 years in jail for fraud, extortion and making false statements.

Bishop Lamor Whitehead’s Authorized Troubles Main Up To His 9-12 months Jail Sentence

Whitehead was initially arrested in Dec. 2002  and charged with “defrauding one in every of his parishioners out of a part of her retirement financial savings, trying to extort and defraud a businessman, and mendacity to the FBI.” Then, final yr, we reported that he was going through further fraud expenses for forging paperwork to purchase his $1.3 million mansion in New Jersy regardless of having subsequent to no cash in his checking account, amongst a protracted listing of different offenses that point out he was balling on everybody else’s finances however his personal.

From the Lawyer’s Workplace’s press launch:

WHITEHEAD, who leads a church in Brooklyn, New York, stole from his personal parishioners, sought to defraud and extort a businessman, and dedicated mortgage fraud.  First, WHITEHEAD induced one in every of his parishioners to take a position roughly $90,000 of her retirement financial savings with him by promising to make use of the cash to assist her purchase a house.  He then spent the cash on luxurious items and different private bills and, when she demanded to be paid again, he continued to misinform keep away from returning the cash.  Second, WHITEHEAD extorted a businessman for $5,000, then tried to persuade the identical businessman to lend him $500,000 and provides him a stake in sure actual property transactions in return for favorable actions from the Mayor of New York Metropolis, though WHITEHEAD knew he couldn’t receive the favors he promised.  Third, WHITEHEAD submitted a fraudulent utility for a $250,000 enterprise mortgage, together with doctored financial institution statements that falsely claimed WHITEHEAD had hundreds of thousands of {dollars} within the financial institution and tons of of hundreds of {dollars} in month-to-month income.  He submitted comparable fraudulent purposes to varied different monetary establishments, stealing hundreds of thousands of {dollars} within the course of.  Lastly, when talking with FBI brokers who have been executing a search warrant outdoors WHITEHEAD’s mansion in New Jersey, WHITEHEAD falsely claimed that he had no cellphones aside from the telephone he was carrying when, in reality, WHITEHEAD had and commonly used a second cellphone, which was inside his home on the time.

In keeping with the N.Y. Every day Information, earlier than handing Whitehead down his sentence of almost a decade, Manhattan federal courtroom Decide Lorna Schofield informed the pastor he hadn’t proven “any regret to your conduct” even after the courtroom heard all of the proof towards him, which she mentioned was “frankly overwhelming.” In spite of everything was mentioned and accomplished, Whitehead was discovered responsible in March on 5 felony counts, ” together with wire fraud, tried extortion, mendacity to the FBI, and associated expenses related to 3 separate schemes that noticed him bilk tens of hundreds of {dollars} from unsuspecting victims,” the Every day Information reported. Along with the 9 years in jail, the 45-year-old was sentenced to 3 years of supervised launch, ordered to pay $85,000 in restitution to his victims, and ordered to forfeit $95,000.

Seems like getting robbed by gunpoint on digicam was the least of Bishop Whitehead’s worries—assuming that wasn’t additionally a complete rip-off.