The man posed as a preacher and had at least 10 wives, prosecutors say

He traveled around the country visiting small black churches, presenting himself as a pastor or bishop.

But prosecutors said they found no evidence that Orlando Coleman, 51, of Houston, was a member of the clergy and they allege he used the claim to gain the trust of church-going women — at least 10 of whom he had dated over the past two decades. married. .

It was a long-running scam that ended last week, prosecutors said, when Mr. Coleman was sentenced to three years in prison after he married a woman in Kentucky and violated the terms of his probation on bigamy charges.

Vanessa Goussen, an assistant district attorney in Harris County, Texas, who prosecuted Mr. Coleman, said investigators believe his first marriage was in 2001 and that he married women for financial gain.

Over the years, she said, Mr. Coleman to Delaware, Texas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Iowa, North Carolina, Virginia and other states to meet women.

After introducing himself as a Protestant minister or bishop, he would propose marriage to stake his claim as a member of the clergy, Ms. Goussen said. If a woman accepted, she said, he would move in with her and she would pay for his housing, food and bills.

“That was all he had to offer and to back up his word — the proposal to get married — that was something big,” Ms. Goussen said in an interview on Wednesday. “It was a great gesture for these women to be proposed to, and that confirmed his pretense of being a godly person.”

After Mr. Coleman left his wives, some of them filed for divorce, the prosecutor said.

Mr. Coleman’s lawyer did not respond to messages seeking comment on Wednesday and Thursday. Two of the women Mr. Coleman married, could not be reached at the numbers listed under their names.

Prosecutors said Mr. Coleman’s scams began to unravel after he married a Houston woman in 2021. Five months after their wedding, Mr. Coleman’s new wife discovered he was receiving money from a woman in Virginia, prosecutors said.

According to court documents, the woman in Houston contacted the woman in Virginia via Facebook and they began talking about Mr. Coleman.

The woman in Virginia told Mr. Coleman’s wife in Houston that she had been married to Mr. Coleman since 2019 and gave her a copy of their marriage certificate, court documents show.

The woman in Virginia told Mr. Coleman’s new wife that she and Mr. Coleman had never divorced but separated in 2021 when he moved to Texas, court documents show. Two weeks after the move, Mr. Coleman married the woman in Houston, court documents show.

The Houston woman contacted authorities, and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office investigated and filed bigamy charges.

Mr. Coleman pleaded guilty to bigamy, a crime in Texas, in July 2023 in exchange for three years’ probation and the chance to have his record cleared. But just two months after he was put on probation, prosecutors said, he married a woman in Kentucky while still married to the woman in Virginia.

After prosecutors learned about the new marriage, they filed a motion to revoke his probation. At a hearing on March 11, a judge agreed to the request and imposed the three-year prison sentence.

In a handwritten letter before his sentencing, Mr. Coleman had asked the court to continue his probation and “judge not only my case but also my heart.”

He said he never imagined his newest wife “would come into my life and become my everything.” He said he believed he was free to marry her because he believed his previous marriage had ended in an annulment or divorce.

“If I knew marriage wasn’t allowed,” he wrote, “I would have waited.”

Mr. Coleman also wrote that he had survived sexual abuse as a child, and he said that he “did not know love on any level” growing up.

He said in the letter that he hoped to put the bigamy charges behind him and return to the “church we pastor in Kentucky, where we help feed and clothe people.”

Next to his name he wrote ‘PhD, ThD, DD’, indicating that he was a Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Theology and Doctor of Divinity. Prosecutors said there was no evidence that Mr. Coleman had obtained any advanced degrees.

Ms Goussen said Mr Coleman’s victims, hurt by his behaviour, supported the revocation of his probation.

“From my conversations with them, they were very upset,” she said. “They wanted him to go to jail because they felt this person had abused their trust based on a title and they believed he would do it again.”