A top leader in the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation was accused in a lawsuit filed this week of stealing millions of dollars from the organization through a “scheme of fraud and misrepresentation.”
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday by Black Lives Matter Grassroots, accused Shalomyah Bowers, one of three members of the group’s board of directors, of stealing more than $10 million from the far-left activist group for his own personal use.
The Los Angeles Times noted that Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation raises funds through donations that are then distributed to Black Lives Matter Grassroots, which is “the umbrella organization for local chapters of the group.”
The lawsuit pinned federal and state-level investigations into the group on Bowers’ alleged actions, accusing him of using the group’s funds as a “personal piggy bank” and causing the group “irreparable harm” in a mere matter of months.
“While BLM leaders and movement workers were on the street risking their lives, Mr. Bowers remained in his cushy offices devising a scheme of fraud and misrepresentation to break the implied-in-fact contract between donors and BLM,” the lawsuit said.
Bowers and the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation’s board of directors claimed that those who filed the lawsuit were effectively racists.
“They would rather take the same steps of our white oppressors and utilize the criminal legal system which is propped up by white supremacy (the same system they say they want to dismantle) to solve movement disputes,” the organization said.
Bowers was hired by Marxist Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors in 2020, the year of the George Floyd riots, to help raise money for the group.
Cullors announced last May that she was resigning from the group amid controversy and widespread criticism over the violent riots that broke out across the U.S. in 2020, the group’s extreme ideas, and controversy over Cullors’ lavish lifestyle, which included buying “four high-end homes for $3.2 million in the U.S. alone.”
Cullors claimed that criticism from detractors did not factor into her decision to resign, adding, “Those were right-wing attacks that tried to discredit my character, and I don’t operate off of what the right thinks about me.”
After Cullors stepped down, the mothers of Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, and others lashed out, accusing both BLM and Cullors of using their children’s deaths to raise money, but failing to pass the money on to black families in need.
Source: Dailywire
