Lamor Miller Whitehead, the high-living church bishop who turned well-known after he was robbed mid-sermon on a reside stream in July 2022, has been arrested and charged with fraud and extortion.
In keeping with a Dec. 19 press launch from the U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace of the Southern District of New York, Miller is charged “with defrauding one among his parishioners out of a part of her retirement financial savings, making an attempt to extort and defraud a businessman, and mendacity to the FBI.” The 45-year-old pastor of Leaders of Tomorrow Worldwide Church was arrested early Monday.
The discharge quoted U.S. Legal professional Damian Williams, who mentioned partly, “Lamor Whitehead abused the belief positioned in him by a parishioner, bullied a businessman for $5,000, then tried to defraud him of excess of that, and lied to federal brokers.”
Michael J. Driscoll, Assistant Director of the FBI, added that Whitehead was allegedly behind “a number of duplicitous schemes so as to obtain funds from his victims” along with mendacity to investigators.
Indictments unsealed in federal courtroom acknowledged that the pastor induced one parishioner to half with $90,000 in retirement financial savings, promising to speculate them on her behalf. Nevertheless, prosecutors allege the Bishop spent the cash on himself as a substitute, buying “luxurious items” and utilizing it for “different private functions.”
Whitehead allegedly dedicated extortion by asking one other parishioner for $5,000, solely to comply with up with a request for $500,000. In return, prosecutors say the Bishop promised to curry favor on his mark’s behalf with the New York Metropolis authorities, one thing he “knew he couldn’t acquire.” Whitehead can also be accused of mendacity to investigators executing a search warrant of his property, telling them “he had no cellphones apart from the cellphone he was carrying when, in truth, [he] owned a second cellphone, which he repeatedly used to speak.”
If convicted of all expenses — two counts of wire fraud, one among extortion, and one for making false statements — Bishop Lamor Whitehead may face a most whole of 45 years in jail.