‘Everything was gone’: Black Entrepreneur Says $70,000 Worth Of Products Were Taken From Her Shea Butter Business 

“I started the company Northshea. We produce incredible Shea butter that we also use in making our body butter, and we sell wholesale and retail to other businesses that make soap as well,” Dinko told NBC 12. Dinko’s business  gave opportunities to the village she left behind.

“The people there are extremely hardworking, especially the women, and there is extreme poverty to the point where most of them don’t even have food to feed their kids daily,” Dinko said.

Dinko’s business gives people in her village the opportunity to make money.

“Usually if they go out to sell these thing themselves, they sell them for about 25 cents a pound,” Dinko told the news outlet, “so we are able to market this over here, pay them living wages, so they can have a much more comfortable life.”

Dinko said there is “no reason” why women making shea butter should be living in extreme poverty.

However, on July 2nd all this was put on the back burner when storage managers called Dinko and informed her the unit where she keeps her product was unlocked.

“I came back in the evening around 5:45, open this space up, just to realize they were right. Everything was gone,” Dinko said. “Almost 70 thousand dollars worth of items and sweat and all the work we put in over the past couple of years was wiped away.”

According to Henrico police, two suspects are responsible for stealing nearly 2,000 pounds of shea butter from the storage unit according to NBC 12.

“I think I’m really still shocked about how they knew there was so much product in here, who did it specifically and also why they did that to a company that is trying to liberate women from poverty,” Dinko said. A GoFundMe fundraiser has been started to keep Dinko’s dream alive.