International Courant
Lamor Miller-Whitehead, a Brooklyn preacher, is dealing with trial for allegedly looting a parishioner’s retirement funds and trying to extort a businessman.Miller-Whitehead, who based a ministry in 2013, owns property outdoors of Brooklyn and is accused of misappropriating funds for private bills.His prices embrace wire fraud, tried extortion and making false statements to legislation enforcement.
A Brooklyn preacher with ties to New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams is ready to go on trial Monday in Manhattan federal courtroom over prices that he looted a parishioner’s retirement financial savings and tried to extort a businessman to gasoline his lavish way of life.
Lamor Miller-Whitehead, 47, a Rolls Royce-driving bishop, faces the beginning of jury choice two years after a grand jury lodged prices in opposition to him together with wire fraud, tried wire fraud, tried extortion and making false statements to federal legislation enforcement officers.
Prosecutors say he plundered a parishioner’s financial savings and duped a businessman with false claims that they might leverage his connections to New York Metropolis officers, together with Adams, to make thousands and thousands of {dollars}. Miller-Whitehead has pleaded not responsible.
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Miller-Whitehead has been free on $500,000 bail since his arrest, which got here solely months after he was the sufferer of a theft when $1 million in jewellery was stolen from him by gunmen who stunned him throughout a church service.
Bishop Lamor Miller-Whitehead speaks with the media in New York on Might 24, 2022. Miller-Whitehead is ready to go on trial on Monday in Manhattan federal courtroom over prices that he looted a parishioner’s retirement financial savings and tried to extort a businessman to gasoline his lavish way of life. (AP Photograph/Mary Altaffer, File)
His lawyer, Daybreak Florio, stated on the time that her consumer felt as if he have been being turned from a sufferer right into a villain.
“Bishop Whitehead has pled not responsible, and is trying ahead to having his day in courtroom, in order that he can struggle these prices,” Florio stated in an announcement Friday.
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In charging paperwork, prosecutors made no point out of the friendship that Miller-Whitehead developed with town’s mayor whereas he served as Brooklyn’s borough president earlier than his election to town’s prime job.
However an evidentiary request from prosecutors suggests the mayor’s relationship with Miller-Whitehead may grow to be a focus on the trial. Prosecutors are in search of to require a author for The New Yorker to testify a couple of January 2023 article titled, “The Mayor and the Con Man.”
Lawyer Rachel Strom, who represents New Yorker employees author Eric Lach, argued in a letter to Choose Lorna G. Schofield that prosecutors have been attempting to “authenticate a generic, run-of-the-mill denial” that Whitehead made about his dealings with the mayor as soon as Adams knew he was the goal of an investigation.
“The Subpoena is extremely invasive, would expose the journalist to cross examination (probably placing different confidential sources in danger), and make the journalist successfully an arm of legislation enforcement,” she wrote. The decide was anticipated to rule earlier than opening statements.
At a information convention final week, the mayor was requested about authorized filings within the case indicating prosecutors deliberate to point out jurors proof that Miller-Whitehead used the title of Adams to commit fraud and tried extortion.
Adams responded that anybody reporting about it ought to “quote the paperwork that said that clearly he didn’t have authorization and there was no connectivity to the actions of (the) mayor or borough president.”
Amongst pretrial evidentiary rulings, the decide has agreed to exclude point out of Miller-Whitehead’s legal conviction for identification theft and grand larceny, which resulted in a five-year jail stint, though it could possibly be introduced up if he decides to testify.
Miller-Whitehead grew to become a spiritual determine when he fashioned the Leaders of Tomorrow Worldwide Ministries in 2013.
Though he preaches in Brooklyn, he owns a $1.6 million dwelling in Paramus, New Jersey, and an house in Hartford, Connecticut.
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Monday’s trial stems from prices alleging he bilked a parishioner out of $90,000 in retirement financial savings by falsely promising he would discover her a house and make investments the remaining in his actual property enterprise. Prosecutors say he as a substitute spent the cash on luxurious items and clothes.
He is also charged with attempting to persuade a businessman to lend him $500,000 and provides him a stake in actual property offers by claiming his ties to metropolis officers might earn favorable therapy for the businessman’s pursuits.
The businessman, Brandon Belmonte, complained to federal authorities, who initiated a half-year probe in 2022 that culminated in Miller-Whitehead’s arrest.
A few of the key proof on the trial was anticipated to consequence from secret audio recordings made from conversations between Belmonte and Miller-Whitehead.
