Politicians and Conmen
Written by staff on December 7, 2024
Politicians and Conmen – by Carl Vonderau.
In an age where American politics have become performance-based, who are the best performers to have on your side? The answer might be conmen. They can read an audience and manipulate emotions better than most people. Is it any wonder why some of the best conmen have been clergy? So I found it fascinating to read an article published in 2023 in the New Yorker about Lamor Whitehead, a long-time associate of indicted Mayor Eric Adams in New York.
One of the easiest ways for a conman to get close is to ask the mark to serve as his mentor. I think the mark eventually figures that out, but by then the he may be using the conman for his own purposes. Some con men can do the political dirty work he needs without implicating him. So a reciprocal relationship can develop between the mark and the conman.
How does this apply to Whitehead and Adams? Whitehead was imprisoned for a fraud in which he obtained over $2 million in loans and purchased motor vehicles using stolen identities. Around 2013 he was released and started getting close to Adams. Adams was the Brooklyn Borough president in New York City and could use a man connected to his local community. Despite his incarceration, Whitehead was a pastor and had a congregation. For instance, Adams wanted a rezoning of Prospect Park, but residents were organizing against it. So Whitehead showed up with a gang of men at a protest meeting at someone’s house. He and his men shouted down and intimidated everyone there. Adams must have appreciated that. He and Whitehead frequently got together at the Woodlawn restaurant. The owners of the restaurant were later convicted of money laundering. And what did Adams do for Whitehead? He’d help Whitehead’s friends in the music industry. And Whitehead would claim that Adams and the mayor’s office supported him on whatever scheme he was selling.
Somehow Adams ignored all the questionable things Whitehead was accused of. Did Whitehaed stage the robbery at his church so he could pocket the proceeds? Or steal ninety thousand dollars from a former parishioner? How about the rapper Whitehead defended who’d made sex videos of a thirteen-year-old girl? Or the concert Whitehead spearheaded that was cancelled? Somehow the $150K Whitehead raised had disappeared. Even his ex-wife accused him. She claimed that he tried to steal her house.
Why didn’t Adams question why a pastor lived in a multi-million-dollar house in New Jersey and drove a Rolls-Royce S.U.V.? Did he really think Whithead’s real estate investments had paid for jewelry estimated to be worth more than a hundred thousand dollars? Surely he must have heard about Whitehead’s scheme to take some of the settlement money from the family of a man choked to death by police. Whitehead claimed to be the dead man’s illegitimate son. The family considered sharing the proceeds until Whitehead refused to take a DNA test.
Eric Adams seemed to not only ignore the accusations but sympathize with Whitehead. Maybe because they both had tough childhoods and because Adams had his own controversies. In 2010 he was accused of bid rigging for a race track when he was chair of the of the Racing, Gaming and Wagering Committee. He also got contributions from developers seeking to do business with the city and appointed long-time friends to highly paid government positions. he must have thought Whitehead was just doing what everyone did in New York. Like Adams himself did? The indictment in 2024 alleges that Adams accepted over $100,000 in luxury travel and illegal contributions from Turkish nationals in exchange for political favors.
In 2024 his friend, Lamor Whitehead, ended up in jail again for wire fraud, attempted extortion, and making false statements to federal agents. He was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Most of us think that fibbing on our expenses or our taxes is bad enough. But we aren’t in politics in New York.
For more about Lamor Whitehead’s questionable relationship with Lamar Whitehead, see Eric Lach’s fascinating article pin the Ne Yorker on January 14, 2023.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/how-eric-adams-started-mentoring-a-con-man
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