Sunday, May 15, 2011

A black contender for the Miss USA title has dropped out of the pageant after being charged with identity theft

African-American Shaletta Porterfield, who was set to appear as Miss Wisconsin USA, resigned from the beauty contest after being charged with three counts of stealing someone's identity for financial gain. The Madison beauty told investigators that she had forged signatures of business owners on advertising contracts while working for a marketing company. But business owners got wind of the scheme when the marketing company asked them to proof some ads they hadn't agreed to buy. Robert Nagel, Porterfield's lawyer, said that the beauty queen hatched the bogus plot because she was under a lot of pressure from the company to hit her commission goals. Porterfield's troubles are only the most recent black spot for the annual pageant. The 2010 winner, Rima Fakih, embarrassed pageant officials after a local radio station in her hometown in Michigan reveled her pole-dancing past. Fakih, the first-ever Arab-American Miss USA, had won the radio station's "Stripper 101" contest by sexing it up on a stripper pole at a Detroit gentleman's club in 2007.

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