Oklahoma Black Lives Matter leader indicted for fraud, money laundering
OKLAHOMA CITY — A federal grand jury has indicted the leader of the Black Lives Matter movement in Oklahoma City over allegations that millions of grant dollars were improperly spent on international travel, races and personal real estate, prosecutors announced Thursday.
Tashella Sheri Amore Dickerson, 52, was charged earlier this month with 20 counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering, according to court records.
Court records do not list the name of Dickerson’s attorney, and messages left Thursday at his cellphone number and by email were not immediately returned.
According to the indictment, Dickerson had since at least 2016 been executive director of Black Lives Matter OKC, which accepted charitable donations through its affiliation with the Arizona-based Alliance for Global Justice.
In total, BLM OKC has raised more than $5.6 million since 2020, largely through online donors and national bail funds that were supposed to be used to post bail for people arrested in racial justice protests following the killing of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer in 2020, according to the indictment.
When those bail funds were returned to BLM OKC, according to the indictment, Dickerson embezzled at least $3.15 million into her personal accounts, then used that money to pay for trips to Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, retail purchases, at least $50,000 in food and grocery deliveries for herself and her children, a personal vehicle and six properties in Oklahoma City owned by her or a company she controlled.
The indictment also alleges that she submitted false annual reports to the alliance, indicating that the funds were used solely for tax-exempt purposes.
If convicted, Dickerson faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for each count of wire fraud and 10 years in prison and fines for each count of money laundering.
In a live video posted to her Facebook page Thursday afternoon, Dickerson said she was not in custody and was “fine.”
“I cannot make an official comment on what happened today,” she said. “I’m home. I’m safe. I have confidence in our team.”
“A lot of times when people attack you with that kind of thing…it’s proof that you’re doing the work,” she continued. “That’s what I rely on.”
The Black Lives Matter movement first emerged in 2013 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida. But it was the 2014 death of Michael Brown at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri, that made the slogan “Black lives matter” a rallying cry for progressives and a favorite target of derision for conservatives.
The Associated Press reported in October that the Justice Department was investigating whether leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement defrauded donors who contributed tens of millions of dollars during racial justice protests in 2020. There was no immediate indication that Dickerson’s indictment was related to that investigation.
