The Justice Department charged the Southern Poverty Law Center with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering on Tuesday.
SPLC — a nonprofit that says it is dedicated to dismantling white supremacy — is accused of secretly paying informants in white supremacist and other extremist groups more than $3 million between 2014 and 2023.
Specifically, according to the charges, $3 million of SPLC’s donations were allegedly split between the following organizations:
- $1 million to National Alliance, a West Virginia-based white supremacist, neo-Nazi political organization.
- $300,000 to Aryan Nations, an Idaho-based white supremacist, neo-Nazi organization.
- $270,000 to a member of the leadership group that planned “Unite the Right” — an antisemitic rally in which one woman was killed and 19 others were injured.
- $140,000 to a former National Alliance chairman.
- $73,000 to former KKK members.
- $19,000 to an American Front president. American Front is a California-based white supremacist organization.
- Other unspecified amounts went to the National Socialist Movement and the National Socialist Party of America (American Nazi Party).
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Tuesday, “The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence.”
“Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked. This Department of Justice will hold the SPLC and every other fraudulent organization operating with the same deceptive playbook accountable. No entity is above the law,” he said.
SPLC CEO Bryan Fair responded to the indictment in a statement on Tuesday: “Although we don’t know all the details, the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups.”
He said the money trail was likely due to SPLC trying to gather information on extremist activities so they could relay it to local and federal law enforcement.
Blanche rejected this reasoning on Fox News on Tuesday.
“There’s no information that we have that suggests that the money that they were paying to these informants and these members of these organizations, they then turned around and shared what they learned with law enforcement,” he said.
How did SPLC allegedly send money to white supremacists?
The indictment filed by a grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, outlined how prosecutors believe money was funneled secretly to extremist groups.
SPLC officials opened several bank accounts under the names of fake businesses that had no real employees or operations, the indictment said.
These included the “Center Investigative Agency” (CIA), “Fox Photography,” “North West Technologies” and “Tech Writers Group” at “Bank-1,” and “Rare Books Warehouse” at “Bank-2.”
Investigators tracked money from SPLC’s main operating account to the Center Investigative Agency account. From there, funds were spread to the other fake businesses, then sent directly to high-level individuals within or connected to extremist groups.
Money deposited to the Rare Books account was then “loaded onto pay cards issued to the (field sources) who were supposedly employees of the fictitious entity,” the indictment said.
It added, “The financial transactions moving funds from the Rare Books account to the (field sources’) pay cards were designed to still further conceal the true nature, source, ownership and control of the donated funds the SPLC was paying to (field sources).”
From August 2020 to August 2023, IPLC allegedly switched payment methods to the Automated Clearinghouse system and used labels like “Rarebooks020″ for transactions.
SPLC closes 4 bank accounts in 2020
In 2020, Bank-1 began an internal investigation into the four accounts.
Then an SPLC employee asked Bank-1 to close the accounts associated with the CIA, Fox Photography, North West Tech and Tech Writers. They asked that the money in the accounts be transferred to a different account at the bank, held in the name of SPLC.
The accounts closed on Aug. 5, 2020.
In September 2021, then-president and CEO of SPLC, Margaret Huang, told the bank in writing that those four accounts, along with four others were opened “for the benefit of Southern Poverty Law Center operations.”
The objective of the conspiracy, the indictment claims, was to “conduct financial transactions designed to conceal the true nature, source, ownership and control of fraudulently obtained donated money the SPLC paid to (field sources).”