A New York City pastor who said he was robbed in the middle of his sermon on July 24 may not be the innocent victim he portrayed himself as.
According to The City, a lawsuit filed last year in Brooklyn Supreme Court accused the pastor, Lamor Whitehead, of defrauding 56-year-old Pauline Anderson out of $90,000.
Anderson alleged Whitehead convinced her to invest most of her savings into one of his firms. She was a parishioner at the Brooklyn campus of Leaders of Tomorrow International Churches, where Whitehead is a bishop.
Anderson said Whitehead promised in turn for the money, he would help her buy a house despite her bad credit history.
In the lawsuit, she said she wrote a $90,000 cashier’s check to Whitehead in November 2020. She said he was supposed to give her a monthly allowance of $100 to pay living expenses.
According to the lawsuit, Whitehead allegedly had not paid the monthly payments or given any update on buying her a home.
When Anderson questioned him about it, he allegedly said he was treating the $90,000 as a donation to his then-campaign for Brooklyn borough president and did not need to pay it back.
“Mr. Whitehead fraudulently induced Ms. Anderson to liquidate her entire life savings to pay him the ‘investment’ of $90,000.00, promising to use the funds to purchase and renovate a house for her,” the lawsuit alleged.
“Ms. Anderson was instead left with nothing but a vague promise by Mr. Whitehead to pay the funds back in the future followed by an assertion that he had no further obligation to do so.”
Hellbound and Down 