Brooklyn Bishop Lamor Whitehead was released on $500,000 bond following his arraignment Monday in a lower Manhattan courthouse. Whitehead entered a not-guilty plea.
It isn’t clear where the 44-year-old prosperity preacher got the $50,000 cash to secure his $500K bond.
Whitehead was arrested by federal agents on Monday and charged with fraud, extortion, and lying to the FBI. He is accused of swindling a parishioner out of $90,000.
The pastor was ordered to surrender his passport, limit his travel to New Jersey, New York and Connecticut and have no contact with any of the alleged victims or witnesses, according to the Daily Voice.
Whitehead lives in a $3 million mansion in Bergen County. He and his wife wear designer clothing and drive a fleet of luxury vehicles.
Federal officials say he financed his lavish lifestyle using money he stole from his congregation and other victims.
The indictment returned by a grand jury in U.S. District Court in Manhattan alleges he conned a woman out of $90,000 after telling her he would buy her a home and renovate it with her cash.
Instead, authorities say he bought fancy clothes and other luxury items with the woman’s money.
Whitehead also allegedly extorted a businessman for $5,000 and asked him a $500,000 loan in exchange for using his influence with New York City mayor Eric Adams, according to the indictment.
“Lamor Whitehead abused the trust placed in him by a parishioner, bullied a businessman for $5,000, then tried to defraud him of far more than that, and lied to federal agents,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said on Monday. “His campaign of fraud and deceit stops now.”
The bishop’s defense attorney Dawn Florio said federal prosecutors were trying to turn her client “from a victim into a villain.”
“We are vigorously going to defend these accusations,” she said outside the federal courthouse, as Whitehead stood beside her.
Whitehead faces 60 years in federal prison if convicted.
The pastor and his wife were allegedly robbed of $1 million in jewelry and cash during a live-stream sermon at his rented storefront church in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn on July 24.
Two suspects were charged with the armed robbery. Their trials are scheduled to begin in early 2023.
READ ALSO: Bishop Lamor Whitehead: ‘I Didn’t Choke That Woman’
Whitehead was arrested in September and charged with choking out a woman in his storefront church. He denied choking the woman.
Whitehead first made headlines in May when he negotiated the surrender of an accused subway shooter.
