According to the Daily News Lamor Whitehead, the politically connected Brooklyn pastor and self-described mentee of Mayor Adams dubbed the “Bling Bishop” for his flamboyant, big-spending 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 and Whitehead himself, who namedropped a laundry list of city and state officials he’d dealt with, including the mayor, state Attorney General Letitia James, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, his predecessor, the late Ken Thompson, NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey and others, none of whom were in attendance.
“I don’t see any remorse for your conduct,” Judge Schofield said, describing the evidence as “frankly overwhelming.”
A jury in March found the pastor from Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries in Canarsie guilty of five counts, including wire fraud, attempted extortion, lying to the FBI, and related charges connected to three separate schemes that saw him bilk tens of thousands of dollars from unsuspecting victims.
At trial, prosecutors said he abused the trust of his loyal churchgoers in the small Brooklyn community and dangled his ties to the mayor to reap new money-making opportunities.
“Lamor Whitehead is a con man who stole millions of dollars in a string of financial frauds and even stole from one of his own parishioners. He lied to federal agents, and again to the Court at his trial. Today’s sentence puts an end to Whitehead’s various schemes and reflects this Office’s commitment to bring accountability to those who abuse their positions of trust,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
Jail conditions
But in a Monday memo filed in Manhattan Federal Court, Whitehead’s attorney Dawn Florio alleged her client deserves to receive a sentence of supervised release.
Among other reasons, Florio argued leniency is warranted because Whitehead has been confined to his cell “for the overwhelming majority of his time” at the Metropolitan Detention Center — allegedly in part due to a gun recently being found in another inmate’s cell.
“Almost as soon as Mr. Whitehead entered the facility, it went on lockdown as a loaded and operable firearm was found in an inmate’s cell,” Florio wrote, calling conditions in the jail “shocking and unacceptable.”
It wasn’t clear from Florio’s filing exactly when a gun may have been found. She didn’t immediately return a request for comment from the Daily News on Tuesday.
Federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Emery Nelson, whose agency runs the Metropolitan Detention Center, confirmed jail staff received “critical information” on May 21 — the day after Whitehead arrived — about a gun at the facility.
“The [Bureau of Prisons] immediately placed the facility on modified operations status in order to protect the public, staff and incarcerated individuals until a comprehensive search could be completed. The search has concluded, and no firearm was found,” Nelson said. “The facility is operating under normal operations status.”
