Rachel Dolezal, aka Nkechi Diallo, receives new court date for welfare-fraud case
Former Head of the NAACP Spokane chapter Rachel Dolezal, now known as Nkechi Diallo, has received a new court date for her welfare-fraud case in Washington State.
A judge in Washington state has set a new trial date in the welfare fraud case of Rachel Dolezal, the former president of an NAACP chapter in Washington state who made headlines in 2015 after her parents debunked her claims of being African-American.
The case will now be heard March 4, FOX 28 Spokane reported.
Dolezal, 41, who changed her name to Nkechi Diallo in 2016, was arrested in May 2018 on charges of first-degree theft by welfare fraud, perjury in the second degree and false verification for public assistance, FOX 28 reported.
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Investigators claim that several years back Diallo began falsifying reports of her income so that she could qualify for public assistance, the station reported. She claimed she was living on just a few hundred dollars a month, donated by friends, the report said.
She was able to collect nearly $9,000 in state financial assistance from August 2015 to November 2017, Spokane's KHQ-TV reported, citing court documents. But a state investigation of her banking records found she deposited more than $80,000 in that same time period, the report said.
The welfare fraud case started in March 2017 after a state investigator received information that Diallo had written a book -- her autobiography, titled "In Full Color." The investigator reviewed Diallo's records and found that she had been receiving money from book sales, speaking engagements, soap making, doll making and the sale of her art, according to the case file.
After the notoriety that followed the June 2015 disclosure by her parents, with whom she has long feuded, Diallo (then Dolezal) resigned as Spokane NAACP president, was kicked off a police oversight commission, lost a position as a freelance columnist for a weekly newspaper in Spokane and was fired from her job teaching African studies at nearby Eastern Washington University.
Fox News' Sam Chamberlain and the Associated Press contributed to this story.
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