Former Southern Poverty Law Center chief financial officer Heidi Beirich was arrested in California and charged in the Justice Department’s case alleging that the organization secretly used donor money to pay informants inside white supremacist groups, CNN exclusively reported Wednesday.
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Former Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) chief financial officer Heidi Beirich was arrested in California and charged in the Justice Department’s case alleging that the organization secretly used donor money to pay informants inside white supremacist groups, CNN exclusively reported Wednesday.
Beirich, who previously led SPLC efforts to monitor organizations it identified as extremist or white supremacist, was charged in a superseding indictment with wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to submit false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to conceal money laundering, according to CNN.
Prosecutors allege Beirich helped oversee the use of donor funds to compensate sources operating inside extremist organizations. They also allege she shared a bank account with one of those sources while the two were in a romantic relationship.
“I believe she was part of the effort to open bank accounts in completely fictitious companies’ names and make payments to individuals for reasons that were not accurate as described,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a Wednesday news conference. “This is exactly what we said would happen in a case like this, which is that our investigators and the U.S. attorneys and the agents working the case will keep on working it even after the initial indictment.”
CNN reported that it sought comment from both Beirich and the SPLC.
Beirich’s charges stem from the Justice Department’s larger case alleging that SPLC donor money was used for payments that donors were not told about and that some of the transactions were routed through shell companies.
The SPLC has disputed prosecutors’ characterization of the arrangement, arguing that the payments were part of a long-running informant program used to collect intelligence on groups it classifies as hate groups. Its attorneys have also said law enforcement agencies have previously made use of information obtained through SPLC sources.
The indictment further alleges that Beirich was romantically involved with a source who infiltrated a white supremacist organization and stole documents for the SPLC. Prosecutors say the source was paid more than $1 million by the SPLC beginning in 2007. They also allege that Beirich and the source shared a bank account containing $140,000 that came from those payments.
Breitbart News reported in June that Beirich, who served as the SPLC’s director of intelligence from 2012 to 2019, was named in reports as the executive tied to an informant identified in the indictment only as “F-9.”
The indictment alleges $140,000 in SPLC donor money was deposited into joint bank accounts shared by Beirich and F-9 between 2015 and 2021, accounting for approximately 66 percent of all money deposited into the accounts. The indictment further alleges Beirich used donor money from those accounts to cover the couple’s personal living expenses.
F-9 received approximately $1.2 million over roughly two decades while working as an informant, according to the allegations previously reported by Breitbart News.
The Justice Department’s case against the SPLC stretches beyond the payments involving Beirich and F-9.
A June superseding indictment alleged that the SPLC used donor money “to fund the leaders and organizations of racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, and the National Alliance.”
“The SPLC’s paid informants (‘field sources’) engaged in the active promotion of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website,” the Justice Department said in the superseding indictment.
Federal prosecutors alleged $4.1 million in tax-exempt funds were used to compensate informants whose activities included recruiting new members for extremist organizations and purchasing materials used for cross burnings and KKK robes and hoods.
The indictment described two Klan members, identified as F-31 and F-32, who approached the SPLC in 2010 because they feared for their safety and wanted to leave the organization.
Prosecutors allege that rather than assisting them in leaving the Klan, the SPLC paid the two individuals $1,200 per month plus expenses through a shell company called Rare Books Warehouse to remain embedded in the organization.
The indictment alleges some of those funds were subsequently used to recruit KKK members and manufacture white Klan robes. Prosecutors also said the SPLC reimbursed costs “incurred for cross-burning events, to include the wood and fuel used.”
Federal officials further alleged SPLC funds covered extremist-group rallies, the creation of new chapters, racist paraphernalia, and extremist literature.
Among those working as SPLC informants were a Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard and a leader of a private chat group that helped organize the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, according to the indictment. Beirich allegedly oversaw payments that included money directed to a KKK Imperial Wizard.
The Justice Department’s initial filing alleged that the SPLC funneled more than $3 million to people associated with organizations including the Ku Klux Klan, Unite the Right, the Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, the National Socialist Party of America, and other extremist organizations between 2014 and 2023.
