For years, Rachel Dolezal led a secret life in the Pacific Northwest. Her friends believed she was a black woman with a passion for African-American issues. Others saw her as a vocal civil rights leader who later became the local N.A.A.C.P. president in Spokane, Wash.

She was also a liar, her parents said. Estranged from their daughter, her parents came forward in June 2015 to out her as a white woman who had carried on a giant ruse, exposing her in what quickly morphed from a local story into an international sensation.

Two months later, the authorities claimed in court documents this week, she started another scheme.

From August 2015 until last November, Ms. Dolezal received nearly $8,850 in public assistance from Washington State after she had falsely claimed she had little income and needed financial help, according to court documents. Prosecutors charged Ms. Dolezal, 40, who legally changed her name in 2016 to Nkechi Amare Diallo, with theft by welfare fraud, perjury and falsifying records for public assistance — all felonies.

During the more than two years she received public aid, Ms. Dolezal reported a single source of income: $300 per month in gifts from friends. But investigators with the state’s Department of Social and Health Services found that she had deposited nearly $84,000 into her bank account during that same period, according to court documents.