Controversial Bishop Lamor Whitehead is making headlines again—this time for claiming he owned a church building in Brooklyn where he evicted church members.
The City reports the lawsuit seeks $3.5 million in damages from Whitehead and his church and for the city to void the deed.
Lawyers say Whitehead never owned the property he evicted the ministry from. The East Flatbush building was the site of Glory of God Global Ministry
for almost 10 years before Whitehead allegedly changed the locks, kicking out 200 members of that congregation in December 2022. Pastor Joseph Williams said the lockout happened out of nowhere, recalling that he received an alert from the church’s alarm system saying there’d been a break-in. “It’s very devastating,” Williams said.According to the lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court last week, the property was originally purchased by Michael Moses and his sister, Lydia Moses, of Maryland, at a tax sale auction last February for $1.9 million.
Later, Whitehead contacted the siblings to express his interest in purchasing the building, and they permitted him to evict the current tenants while he went through the financing process. He never received the proper financing but still went ahead and allegedly submitted a fraudulent new deed to the Office of the City Register in April, claiming he and his church, Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries, were the rightful owners.
The Brooklyn-based pastor claims it’s “a frivolous lawsuit” and said he had yet to have been served a copy of the lawsuit, so he’s blind to the specifics.
Since 2022, the ministry
leader has been inundated with lawsuits and controversy. Black Enterprise reported in March Whitehead was accused of falsifying bank documents, claiming his business had $2 million in its coffers when there was less than $10 in it. The world was first introduced to him after he was robbed during a sermon and was seen via live stream. Shortly after, he was accused of staging the robbery to collect an insurance payment.