it’s worse than that. in DC, they had minority-only bidding rules for contracts. that means ONLY minority-owned companies could submit and win bids for government contracts.
the problem was that there were virtually no REAL minority-owned companies that could do the work required. so a bunch of black insiders from DC government went out and started forming shell companies that existed only on paper. they would win the contracts and then subcontract out the work to real companies that were forbidden from bidding on the contracts (because they weren’t minority owned). the work got done, but the black insiders who didn’t do any of the work, skimmed off a healthy percentage of the contract cost for themselves. in short, lots of them got really rich off the taxpayer for doing nothing other than being born black.
There are a number of individuals that have been prosecuted and heavily fined by the U.S. government for doing exactly that. Not only that, but bigger firms that hire smaller subcontractors to meet these quotas are exposed to fines for that sort of thing, too.