Rachel Dolezal, Who Posed as Black, Accused of Welfare Fraud

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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.

She illegally received $8,747 in food assistance and $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 $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 $84,000 into her bank account between August 2015 and September 2017, without reporting it to the Department of Social and Health Services.

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She has said previously that she grew up near Troy, Montana, with religious parents and that she began to change her perspective as a teenager, after her parents adopted four black children. She decided to become publicly black years later, after a divorce.

The ruse worked for years until 2015, when her parents, with whom she has long feuded, told reporters that their daughter was born white but was presenting herself as a black activist in the Spokane region.

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