A former NAACP leader in Washington state whose life unravelled after she was exposed as a white woman pretending to be black has been charged with welfare fraud.
Rachel Dolezal, who legally changed her name to Nkechi Diallo in 2016, was charged this week with theft by welfare fraud, perjury and false verification for public assistance, Spokane news station KHQ-TV reported Thursday (US time).
She illegally received US$8,747 in food assistance and US$100 in child care assistance from August 2015 through November 2017, court documents said.
An investigation started in March 2017 when a Washington state investigator received information that Diallo had written a book. The investigator reviewed Diallo's records and found that she had been reporting her income as usually less than US$500 per month, court documents said.
A subpoena for her self-employment records, which included copies of her bank statements, showed Diallo had deposited nearly US$84,000 into her bank account between August 2015 and September 2017, without reporting the majority of it to the Department of Social and Health Services.