Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Lamor Whitehead, aka The Bling Bishop, a Brooklyn pastor known for his flamboyant lifestyle, was sentenced to nine years in prison in June 2024 for wire fraud, attempted wire fraud, attempted extortion, and making false statements. He defrauded parishioners, including misappropriating funds from a congregant's retirement savings. Whitehead also attempted to extort a businessman by falsely promising political favors.

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So how's he going to get rich? We'll see, Lamor is dating a woman who works at a car dealership, and she has access to all the customers' credit reports and personal information. And so Lamor steals her work login info, and I guess, on his own computer, he uses it to access all the customers' information, and then he takes out loans and lines of credit in these customers' names. He then takes that money, and he uses it to buy himself nice cars, nice clothes, jewelry, he buys himself a motorcycle. Oh, and he doesn't just steal the identity of one or two people. He steals the identity of over 50 different people,

and apparently takes out more than $2 million in loans. And of course, people eventually catch on and they report him and bam, he gets arrested. Here's his mugshot. And so he spends five years in prison and he never does anything else bad again ever in his life. Until. So while he's in prison, one day Lamor gets an idea. I'm guessing he gets this idea in prison. I actually don't know where he got it.

But at some point, Lamor realizes that he can really profit off of religion. So in 2013, he gets out. And within a few weeks of getting out, he sets up his own church, and he becomes the bishop of that church. And he starts it out of his home with a small group of people, and he eventually moves it to a more legitimate building space. And of course, with a guy like Lamor, what he's preaching is the prosperity gospel, which suggests that being wealthy will actually get you closer to heaven. God chose me to be a preacher. Y'all think I want to be a preacher? I don't get paid from preaching.

Oh, he definitely gets paid from preaching. Not only that, he makes sure to show off his wealth in front of his congregation. Like he'll preach to them wearing tailor-made designer suits, like this one, or like this one. He also wears nice rings and watches while he preaches. Even when he's not at church, he's always decked out in some super expensive designer shit. So, where is he getting the money to pay for all this stuff? His congregation, of course. And he's not just allegedly skimming from the donations.

No, no, no. It's way more direct than that. Like one day, he calls up one elderly woman in his congregation, and he cons her into handing over her retirement fund. Like he tells her that he can improve her credit score and help her purchase and renovate a new home if she just invests with him. And she believes him and she hands over $90,000. And of course, instead of helping her improve her credit score or buy a house, Lamour takes the money and he heads straight to Louis Vuitton. where he gets himself some new drip. He also puts the money towards some payments on a BMW.

And as you can imagine, pretty quickly, after starting his church, Lamor becomes the richest bishop on the block. Like he's driving around in a Rolls Royce. He also apparently has another Rolls Royce. This one's actually worth $350,000, by the way. He's also living in a 9,000 square feet mansion. And I'll walk you out into my prayer closet. This is my prayer closet.

Got all my priestly robes, designer, coats, you name it, Gucci, Louis, you name it. Fendi, you name it. Designed wear for days, for days, for days, for days, for days, for days, for days. Not only that, he's getting kind of a JV celebrity status from all this, and people start calling him the bling bishop. And from there, his Instagram blows up to 1.3 million followers, and known people start affiliating with him. Like, here's footage of 50 cents speaking at his church.

Here he is apparently hanging out with Fat Joe. Here he is with Tracy Morgan. Here he is with Jha Rule. Here he is hanging out with New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Who's another shady guy that we talked about in a previous video, if you remember. Okay, but then something kind of crazy happens. Something that starts to change everything. One day in 2022, he's up in front of his congregation, preaching or whatever.

And that is when suddenly boom, three men in masks bust into the building, and they have pu-pues. And Lamore is live streaming this sermon so you can actually see the moment he realizes these men are there to rob him. How many of you have lost your faith because you saw somebody else die what you were about to go through?

Yo. Yo. All right, right, right. And you can see him here laying down on the floor and then you can see these men come up and rob him. And they apparently steal a million dollars worth of jewelry from the people there including Lamar's watch and chain.

His watch is a Rolex valued at $75,000. His chain is valued at $400,000. And he livestreams afterwards and talks about all this. He took all of my wife's jury and took all of my jury, and then they left. And so like the story breaks and reporters are hitting him up and they're asking him if he's going to wear less jewelry in church so that he's less likely to get robbed. Are you going to wear less bling so you're less of a target? I will wear what I've been blessed with by God when I feel like. Now, police eventually end up catching the guys who did it.

But this live stream footage of the robbery blows up. Because it's a crazy moment. A bishop getting robbed in the middle of a sermon on a live stream? Like, what are the odds? And so this story ends up all over the news. A Brooklyn Bishop was robbed at gunpoint in the middle of his Sunday sermon today, and it was all caught on camera. And people hear about it, and they're like, wait a minute.

Why was this preacher wearing a Rolex in a $400,000 chain? Where's bro getting all this money? And so allegedly, this is when reporters really start looking into him. And one day, also allegedly, some of them show up to his house to see if they can get a statement from him about some of the bad press he's been getting. You know, that big-ass house that he owns? But when they get there, supposedly, they notice that there's a foreclosure notice on his door. And they see this, and they see this, and they see this, and they see this,

And they're like, what the hell is going on? Is the Blingbishop actually broke? Apparently? Yes. He had been spending all this money on his lifestyle. And at some point, he starts running into money problems. Like he's failing to make payments on those luxury cars that he got. He gets sued a couple of times over failing to make loan repayments. And so it seems like Lamour needs money real bad. And he starts getting pushy about getting it. And one day, he tries to target this guy, Brandon. Brandon owns a local auto body repair shop. And I have no idea how these two guys know each other, but at some point, Lamor tries to get $5,000 from him. And he threatens to use force if he doesn't get it. So I guess he's like, I'll kick your ass if you don't give me $5,000. And if that

isn't bad enough, then he tries to get Brandon to lend him $500,000. And in exchange, he promises to give him access to New York City mayor, Eric Adams. Told you that guy was shady. But Brandon is like, fuck all this, and he turns on him and he starts cooperating with the FBI. And the FBI sets up a whole sting operation and they get Brandon to wear a wire and meet up with Lamor. And so he meets up with Lamor. And Lamor swears to him that he has connections with Mayor Eric Adams and whatever business scam he's trying to get him into is going to make them millionaires. And this whole conversation is recorded for the feds to hear. And eventually, after a long investigation, the feds find him and bam, they arrest him.

Here's his mugshot. And he goes to trial and he's found guilty for wire fraud and a bunch of other stuff. And he's sentenced to nine years in prison. Wow.