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Bishop Lamor Whitehead, the flamboyant Canarsie pastor best known for his friendship with Mayor Eric Adams and his bizarre role in the surrender of the Q-train shooter, claims he was given $1 in jewelry during a sermon last week million dollars stolen. “When I saw them coming into the sanctuary with their guns, I said to everyone, ‘Down,'” Whitehead said in an Instagram video describing the alleged theft. “I didn’t know if they wanted to shoot the church.” He says the thieves demanded that Whitehead and his wife hand over all of their jewelry, including a $75,000 Rolex watch and a $75,000 Cavalier watch $75,000, a $25,000 Episcopal ruby-and-diamond ring, and a $25,000 Episcopal diamond ring and jeweled spheres, according to the New York Post.
Aside from jewelry and his role at the Leaders of Tomorrow International Church (and the occasional negotiation of refugees), Whitehead also dabbles in real estate. On Instagram, he brags about “buying blocks” and poses (in, yes, a Fendi sweater) in front of a half-block-long, 48-unit apartment complex in Hartford, Connecticut that his LLC, Whitehead Estates, purchased in January 2021 He was again outside the same apartment complex advertising real estate courses, but Whitehead Estates doesn’t appear to have a website and the registration for the courses was a church email address.
That’s not the only question about his holdings. When The City recently visited Whitehead’s home in Paramus, New Jersey, they found a note taped to the door that he was in default on a $4.5 million loan he took on the Hartford property, which is located at 150–180 Earle Street, in the seedy Northeast neighborhood. The address listed on this loan is an apartment in a rent stabilized complex in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens that was purchased in 2012 by what appears to be an unaffiliated LLC. At the time, Whitehead was in Sing Sing serving a five-year sentence for his involvement in a $2 million identity theft scam.
Last week, The City reported that a parishioner was suing Whitehead for stealing her $90,000 life savings, which she had entrusted to him to help her buy a home. Because of bad credit, she had trouble getting a home loan; Whitehead had helped her son find an apartment and he encouraged her to seek Whitehead’s help. But the pastor, after taking her money, reportedly told her he would treat it as a donation to his campaign for Brooklyn Borough President. Last summer, he accidentally emailed her son a deal to buy a $4.4 million mansion in Saddle River, New Jersey, though the sale never went through.
What does he own? A more modest (by comparison) home in Paramus, NJ — a six-bedroom McMansion he bought in 2019 for $1.64 million Jacuzzi tub overlooking the yard.
After the robbery, the pastor posted a lengthy Instagram video defending his shopping habit: “It’s not that I’m flashy,” he said. “It’s about buying what I want to buy. It’s my prerogative to buy what I want to buy.” He also accused the media of publicizing his lifestyle over the past year, when he tried to use his relationship with Adams to investigate the alleged Subway handover -Protect Andrew Abdullah to negotiate.
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