White ex-NAACP head pleads not guilty to fraud

SPOKANE, Wash. -- Fraud should be her middle name, but then again, she'd probably change it. Former NAACP chief Rachel Dolezal, who changed her name to sound as if she is black, to Nkechi Diallo, was charged with welfare fraud.

Dolezal [I prefer to use her given name rather than her self-acquired name just as I prefer to say she is white rather than her self-acquired race] was charged with welfare fraud and false verification for public assistance related to income obtained from a book and other sources while receiving welfare benefits.

She made a brief appearance in Spokane County Superior Court where she  pleaded not guilty on Wednesday--big surprise.

Superior Court Judge James Triplet (aka "Jimmy Three") ordered that she remain free on her own recognizance and a trial date was set for September 10.

Dolezal and her lawyers did not speak to reporters after the hearing.

You may remember that Dolezal tried to change her outward appearance to look black when working as head of Spokane's NAACP chapter, but was outed in 2015 when it was revealed she was born to white parents and raised in rural Montana.

Her welfare fraud case began in March 2017 when a state investigator obtained information that Dolezal/Diallo had written a book and discovered she had been reporting her income as usually less than $500 per month, court documents said.

Being true to her fraudulent past, she seemed to be merely identifying as being welfare eligible, because records show she deposited almost $84,000 into her account from 2015-2017, and didn't tell the state Department of Social and Health Services.

The money was generated from her delusional memoir "In Full Color," as well as speaking engagements, soap making, doll making and the sale of her art, according to the case record.

In an apparent attempt to sound legitimate, she reported one change of circumstance saying she did a one-time job in October 2017 and was paid $20,000.

The charges accuse her of improperly receiving about $8,800 in welfare money.

Dolezal grew up near Troy, Montana. Her religious parents adopted four black children and she later decided that she would call herself black too, and used the ruse that this was how she "identified."

That ruse worked until her parents, with whom she had long feuded, told the media in 2015 that Rachel was white but telling the public she was black and was an activist.

She left her position at the NAACP and was kicked off a police oversight commission. She also lost her job as a freelance columnist for a weekly newspaper in Spokane and lost her job teaching African studies at Eastern Washington University.

It is probable that Rachel Dolezal is mentally ill and has been able to conceal this for years.


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