Identity Crisis! Rachel Dolezal Charged with Welfare Fraud

FILE - In this July 24, 2009, file photo, Rachel Dolezal, a leader of the Human Rights Education Institute, stands in front of a mural she painted at the institute's offices in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Dolezal, now president of the Spokane, Wash., chapter of the NAACP, is facing questions about whether she lied about her racial identity, with her family saying she is white but has portrayed herself as black. (AP Photo/Nicholas K. Geranios, File)

 

Rachel Dolezal (now officially Nkechi Diallo) first rose to infamy when she was outed as a white woman while simultaneously claiming to be black. Her con was so successful she became the president of her local NAACP branch and even taught African Studies at Eastern Washington University.

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Now she’s being outed for a different type of fraud – welfare fraud.

The subject of the Netflix documentary “The Rachael Divide” is accused of falsely representing her circumstances in order to garner nearly $9000 in food and childcare welfare benefits.

The story was first reported on KHQ out of Spokane, WA:

The investigation into Diallo’s alleged theft started in March 2017 when a DSHS Office of Fraud and Accountability investigator received information that Diallo had written a book that got published. The investigator said he’d heard Diallo say she was getting public assistance, but also knew that a typical publishing contract included payments of $10,000 to $20,000.

The investigator conducted a review of Diallo’s records and found she’d been reporting her income was usually less than $500 per month, in child support payments. At one point when asked as to how she was paying her bills, she reported, “Barely! With help from friends and gifts.”

However, a subpoena for her self-employment records, which included copies of her bank statements from 2015 to present, tells a different story. The bank records, court documents say, showed Diallo had deposited about $83,924 into her bank account in several monthly installments between August 2015 and September 2017, without reporting the income to the Department of Social and Health Services. The money, according to the case file, had come from authoring her book, ‘In Full Color,’ speaking engagements, soap making, doll making, and the sale of her art.

During the course of the investigation, Diallo did report a “change of circumstance” to the Department of Social and Health Services, saying she did a one-time job in October of 2017 worth $20,000, and Diallo voluntarily came in for an interview with fraud investigators last month. But when questioned about possible discrepancies in her income reporting, Diallo stated she “fully disclosed her information and asked, ‘what discrepancies?”. Diallo then told the investigator that she “did not have to answer” any more questions, since she had not waived her Miranda rights, which ended the interview.

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Once a fraud, always a fraud?

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