Former Omaha LGBTQ+ activist indicted in New York for alleged theft of nonprofit funds

Dominique Morgan, 42, an Omaha native who was well-known in the city’s LGBTQ+ community and nonprofit scene before her move to Atlanta in 2022, faces one count of second-degree grand larceny and 23 counts of falsifying business records for money she allegedly stole from OKRA Project, a New York nonprofit at which she was briefly the executive director.  

OKRA Project is a nonprofit dedicated to providing mutual aid, housing support and other services for Black transgender people across the country. Morgan’s LinkedIn shows that she led the nonprofit from January to August 2022. According to Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, Morgan’s salary was “over $200,000” annually. 

Though providing bail assistance was not an “official program,” Gonzalez said, Morgan decided during her tenure that the organization would begin providing bail assistance to indigent defendants. Gonzalez said she “did not take any steps to get the initiative up and running,” aside from a $99,000 transfer from the nonprofit’s funds to her personal bank account in July 2022, purportedly to pay to bail people out of jail. 

Gonzalez said OKRA asked Morgan for proof that the $99,000 was used to bail people out of jail, and Morgan provided “bail receipts” for 23 individuals who she said were arrested and jailed in Fulton County, Georgia, and in Douglas County, Nebraska. An audit by OKRA found that the receipts were fraudulent, according to the attorney’s office, and none of the named individuals had been arrested or bailed out of jail in either county. 

Morgan instead used the funds to pay for a $19,000 “California closet renovation,” car payments on a Mercedes Benz, clothing and meals, Gonzalez said. 

In a statement shared with friends on her personal Facebook page, Morgan said she looks forward to “reaching the other side of this process” and presenting her side in court. 

“I recognize that rumors, emails sent to my employers, and one-on-one conversations with decision-makers over the last two years have been used to build the foundation of the case,” Morgan wrote. “Now, I finally have the chance to present my side — to bring the facts forward in the forum where they being, and to ensure that everything is recorded and assessed transparently.” 

Morgan was the executive director of Omaha-based nonprofit Black and Pink, a national organization providing support to incarcerated LGBTQ+ people, from 2017 to 2022, according to a Facebook post from Black and Pink National from June 2022. Last year, the Omaha City Council voted unanimously to name a short stretch of Taylor Street in North Omaha after Morgan, making her the first transgender person to be honored with a commemorative street name in Omaha.