Harlem Clergy Took Secret Cash As They Sold Churches To Developer: AG

HARLEM, NY — Senior religious leaders conspired with a developer to sell seven churches in Harlem and Brooklyn in exchange for secret payments — only for the developer to waver from his promise to build new homes for the churches, in some cases demolishing them and letting the sites sit empty for years, according to state prosecutors.

The deals, which netted the three church leaders nearly $2 million combined, were uncovered through an investigation launched by New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office into the developer, Moujan Vahdat, prosecutors said.

Vahdat and two of the church leaders reached settlements with the state last year, though the accusations against them have not previously been reported. A third pastor also under investigation is still battling the state in court, as Patch previously reported.

The churches, all part of predominantly Black denominations, were often struggling financially and saw the sales as potential lifelines, according to prosecutors.

“Not without a struggle, over the past several years we have worked hard to maintain the upkeep of the house of God," the board of one cash-strapped Harlem church wrote in a 2015 resolution supporting the sale to Vahdat. "We understand that there has been a need for a greater vision from God to move this church forward in its fiscal responsibility and ministry.”

But behind congregants' backs, authorities say, church leaders were accepting cash payments and expensive gifts then turning a blind eye as Vahdat revised the sale contracts in his favor, squeezed churches for more money, and in one case, shut off a church’s heat in the middle of winter and allowed its ceiling to collapse onto a parishioner.

Vahdat’s attorney defended his conduct, telling Patch he remains focused on “bringing vibrant new church facilities to the community.” Indeed, even after the state’s intervention, many of the houses of worship are still doing business with Vahdat to this day.

A Fruitful Relationship

Vahdat, a billionaire real estate and telecommunications magnate, began eyeing churches for possible development deals in 2013, prosecutors wrote in a document laying out their investigation. Despite his history in the industry, Vahdat had no experience with church developments, prosecutors noted.

He soon met Bishop Kevin Griffin, the senior pastor of Childs Memorial Temple Church of God in Christ (COGIC), after being introduced by a real estate broker who knew Griffin’s wife, prosecutors said.

By 2014, Griffin agreed to sell his dilapidated Amsterdam Avenue church building for $2 million to Vahdat, who promised to replace it with an apartment building with space reserved for Childs Memorial, prosecutors said.

As Patch previously reported, Griffin did not reveal to his parishioners or to state authorities that he personally received $450,000 once the church sale closed in early 2016 — nor an additional $440,000 in “finder’s fees” for introducing Vahdat to other church leaders, prosecutors say.

One such institution was Healing from Heaven Temple COGIC, a struggling house of worship on Frederick Douglass Boulevard that Vahdat bought in late 2015 — the first of the seven churches to close a sale, prosecutors said.

By spring 2015, while the Childs Memorial sale was still pending, Griffin had helped connect Vahdat to pastors of two churches in the African Methodist Episcopal denomination: St. John AME Church, on West 134th Street, and Bethel Tabernacle AME, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, authorities say.

Weeks later, Vahdat sat down for a meeting with Griffin and two other key players: Bishop Gregory G. M. Ingram, who led a division of the AME Church that covers New York and several other states; and Rev. Melvin Wilson, an appointee of Ingram’s who supervised AME churches in Brooklyn and Westchester, prosecutors say.

Thus began a fruitful relationship between the developer, Ingram and Wilson, kicked off by a $200,000 donation that Vahdat made out to the AME Church the following month — which Wilson later acknowledged in an email had been “contingent” on closing the deal to lease Bethel Tabernacle in Brooklyn, according to state prosecutors.

With the donation serving as a foot in the door, authorities say, Wilson and Ingram helped Vahdat purchase three more AME churches between 2015 and 2017: Ebenezer AME Church on East 123rd Street, Greater Bethel AME Church on West 123rd Street, and Metropolitan AME Church on West 135th Street.

Almost every deal entailed tearing down or renovating the existing churches and replacing the demolished ones with new multi-story apartment buildings or homeless shelters containing space reserved for the church — an apparent win-win, giving the churches financial relief and a space to continue worship, the state said.

In each case, Vahdat negotiated sale terms with the church’s pastor, as Ingram and Wilson helped the pastor make counteroffers before submitting final agreements to the church’s parishioners and to the attorney general's office, which must approve the sale of religious properties, prosecutors said.

But Bishop Ingram and Rev. Wilson never mentioned their own stakes in the deals — Vahdat personally gave Ingram a combined $610,000 between 2016 and 2017, including an envelope filled with $10,000 in cash, plus a Rolex watch and an expensive designer handbag for Ingram’s wife, prosecutors say.

Wilson personally received $144,250 altogether from Vahdat between 2015 and 2018 — though his access to funds controlled by the AME Church’s Brooklyn-Westchester District ultimately netted him roughly $300,000, prosecutors said. Griffin, finally, made a combined $900,00 from his relationship with Vahdat, authorities contend.

Attorneys for Ingram and Wilson did not respond to requests for comment, while Griffin's lawyers have insisted that the pastor never betrayed his church.

When church leaders requested the state's approval for each sale, none of those applications, which were ultimately approved, mentioned Ingram or Wilson’s financial stake in the deals, prosecutors say. Indeed, Ingram himself submitted a resolution for the Ebenezer sale in April 2017, falsely saying that nobody involved in the church had a “direct or indirect financial or other relationship with the Developer,” authorities say.

Rev. Wilson, for his part, eagerly solicited the payments, prosecutors say. In 2016, the reverend wrote to Vahdat to “prayerfully submit” a compensation proposal, demanding $100,000 from the Ebenezer sale, other payments for the Crown Heights church sale, and a monthly stipend of $10,000, according to authorities.

Wilson apparently got much of what he asked for — months later, he emailed Vahdat to thank him for “helping me to acquire my [...] new car,” prosecutors say.

He added, according to authorities: “You continue to be a blessing to me and my family.”

A Ceiling Collapse And A Pastor’s Pushback

Just as some of the deals were being finalized and after the state had signed off on the terms, Ingram and Wilson allowed the details to be altered at the churches’ expense, prosecutors said.

At the closing of Greater Bethel AME, for example, the church’s planned rent burden of just $1 per month was suddenly upped to $1,500, according to authorities. Rev. Wilson called in during the closing and directed the church’s pastor to agree to the new deal “per the Bishop’s order,” according to prosecutors.

Greater Bethel, based in a landmarked building near Lenox Avenue, could not afford the new rent and failed to make payments — prompting Vahdat to file a lawsuit to evict the church, prosecutors said. (The rent was later reverted back to $1 after a church elder intervened, according to the state.)

Vahdat also made good on threats to turn off Greater Bethel’s heat and electricity during the winter, and ignored complaints that the church’s sanctuary ceiling was caving in — leading to a collapse that caused “substantial damage” and injured a parishioner, who ended up filing a personal injury lawsuit, according to prosecutors.

Even as the church battled against its new landlord, Ingram and Wilson still helped Vahdat buy his next target, Ebenezer AME, in June 2017, prosecutors said.

There, too, Vahdat began “unilaterally altering terms of the deal,” in this case by withholding two months of payments he owed to Ebenezer over claims that the church had not kept its building clean enough, prosecutors said.

By July 2017, Ebenezer’s pastor began to push back, writing in an email to Bishop Ingram that Vahdat “has not been judicious in this matter.”

“[Vahdat] said that he had pictures and he was going to forward them. To date, there have been no pictures received,” the pastor wrote. “As I shared with you, Bishop, we spent over $10,000 for the clean-up of that building. Even if there was something 'left over' it was not to the tune of $6,000. [Vahdat] is being extremely unreasonable.”

By September 2017, Vahdat acquired his final target, Metropolitan AME — a distinctive, colorful house of worship on the corner of Lenox Avenue that describes itself as Manhattan’s second-oldest AME congregation. Metropolitan was facing a $14,000 shortfall that year, it attested in a court filing.

All told, Vahdat demolished three of the church buildings in the ensuing years — Healing From Heaven Temple, Childs Memorial Temple, and St. John AME Church — but did not construct any replacements, even though the sale contracts required those projects to be done by 2019, prosecutors said.

The remaining four churches, supposed to be renovated as part of the deals, sat unchanged into early 2021, according to authorities.

“Made For Charitable Purposes”

By early 2018, the state attorney general’s office had begun investigating the church deals after hearing “allegations” that the churches’ sale terms had been changed, prosecutors wrote in their settlements with the three men.

As the probe loomed, Vahdat asked Ingram and Wilson to produce letters describing the personal payments he gave each of them as "having been made for charitable purposes for use on the churches’ behalf" — adding that he had given them the payments personally only for “expediency” and “convenience,” prosecutors said.

Wilson and other clergy members pressed Vahdat in the ensuing months for answers about missing payments he owed to the churches and a lack of progress on the new developments.

“The Bishop would like me to get an update on the progress of moving toward the pouring of cement in October for our construction project,” the pastor of St. John’s AME wrote to Vahdat in September 2018.

"To date, [Vahdat] and I have not met nor has any exterior work been done," the pastor of Ebenezer AME wrote in another email to Bishop Ingram in January 2019. "The building is still standing and we have no updated information."

Ingram and Wilson kept up their dealings with Vahdat into 2019, seeking his bid on a multimillion-dollar project to renovate an AME district headquarters in Philadelphia, prosecutors said.

Another AME pastor and official tried to solicit a $3 million finder’s fee from Vahdat if he was picked for that project, but he was never chosen as the developer, prosecutors said.

By 2021, state prosecutors intervened in the New York church dealings, reaching settlements with Vahdat in October and Wilson and Ingram in November, records show. Vahdat agreed to "neither admit nor deny" the state's accusations, while Ingram and Wilson both promised not to make any public statements denying the investigation's findings.

"The clergy placed their self-interest ahead of the interests of the churches," the attorney general’s office wrote in a virtual presentation delivered to the AME churches in November 2021, obtained by Patch via a public records request.

“When Mr. Vahdat failed to satisfy contractual obligations, the clergy did not act to enforce the terms, but instead permitted Mr. Vahdat to alter or amend protections provided to the churches without obtaining AG or Court approval.”

Wilson and Ingram’s settlements both required them to pay back the money they received in a series of installments — plus, in Ingram’s case, the proceeds from his Rolex watch, which he sold for $33,000, according to the November presentation to the churches.

Both men are barred from holding a role in any New York-based nonprofit or charity that involves dealing with money, though both can continue holding purely “spiritual” positions, according to the settlements.

Indeed, both Wilson and Ingram appear to maintain active roles in the AME Church. Ingram and his wife were thrown a retirement party in 2021 and were pictured attending an AME board meeting earlier this summer, while Wilson’s LinkedIn profile lists him as the pastor of an AME church in Orange, N.J.

One day after Patch began contacting the people involved in this story for comment, the AME Church released a statement on Aug. 31 that condemned "the inappropriate practices of our colleague and the former presiding elder in the New York Conference, who currently pastors in the New Jersey Conference," according to Religion News Service, which reported on the statement Wednesday.

Ingram will not take part in any denominational events until 2024, while discipline against Wilson will be determined by the bishop now in Ingram's former role, according to the statement.

Vahdat’s settlement, meanwhile, requires him to keep up to date on any payments owed to the churches and cover their legal fees.

As for the churches themselves, state prosecutors allowed each one to choose between four restitution plans — with options including a full cash-out that would let Vahdat buy their property for an agreed-upon sum, or a “monitored performance” plan, where Vahdat and the church would proceed with their original development deal — under the oversight of a third-party construction expert paid for by Vahdat.

Six of the seven churches ultimately chose the monitored performance plan, meaning they have stayed in business with Vahdat. Just one, St. John AME, opted to cash out for $1.3 million, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office told Patch last week.

Work Inches Forward

Reached for comment, an attorney for Moujan Vahdat defended the developer’s actions.

“From the start of these projects, the developer has focused on rehabilitating these buildings that have been in disrepair for years and bringing vibrant new church facilities to the community,” attorney Jason Gottlieb told Patch.

“The developer is grateful to the churches for their continued confidence in the developer and he looks forward to working with the churches to ensure these projects are completed as soon as possible.”

Indeed, more than a year after state prosecutors reached settlements with Vahdat and the two church leaders, work is finally underway on several of the long-stalled developments.

Patch visited the sites of all six Harlem churches this month and found signs of construction at two of them: Ebenezer AME, whose East 123rd Street building has been clad with a new facade, and Healing From Heaven Temple, whose empty lot on Frederick Douglass Boulevard has been cleared of debris and surrounded by fencing.

Bethel Tabernacle AME, in Crown Heights, also has on file recent construction permits to renovate its 100-year-old brick building that formerly contained a public school. Both Bethel Tabernacle and Ebenezer will house homeless shelters after their renovations, according to the permits.

Negotiations are happening behind the scenes on at least one other of the properties that Vahdat still controls: Childs Memorial COGIC on Amsterdam Avenue. There, local leaders spoke out last year against Vahdat’s plan to build a homeless shelter along with the new church facility, saying the city should build permanently affordable housing there instead.

Community Board 9 chair Barry Weinberg told Patch that leaders had arranged a deal for Vahdat to sell the property to a supportive housing developer, but the purchase fell through after the state attorney general’s office “got spooked,” he said.

“We’re reconvening in September to push the issue,” Weinberg said last week.

The remaining churches will need to put their trust in Vahdat — save for the cashed-out St. John AME, whose former 134th Street property now belongs entirely to Vahdat under the terms of the settlement. St. John’s website now lists only a P.O. box and mentions virtual sermons.

On the site where the church’s modest gray building stood for decades, there is now only a fenced-off empty lot, overgrown with weeds.

Have a Harlem news tip? Contact reporter Nick Garber at nick.garber@patch.com.