A former employee of the Southern Poverty Law Center has been arrested in California for allegedly overseeing payments made to far-right extremist groups — the very groups the center claims to target.
Heidi Beirich, 59, previously ran the hate-tracking program at the SPLC. The U.S. Justice Department said it is charging Beirich and the SPLC with “conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to submit false statements to a federally insured bank, and ”also adds Beirich as a defendant to the previously charged count of conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering and charges the SPLC with an additional count of concealment money laundering."
Wednesday’s superseding indictment marks the second case the DOJ has brought against the nonprofit this year. In April, the Justice Department charged SPLC with 11 additional counts including “wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.”
From 2010 to 2023, the filing said the group “secretly funneled” more than $4 million in tax-exempt donations towards attending, hosting, and growing group rallies for extremist groups, and alleges the group also paid for robes, hoods, and crosses to burn for the Ku Klux Klan.
The indictment that was released on Wednesday accuses Beirich of authorizing payments to informants embedded within white supremacist groups, including one informant who stole documents from an extremist group for the SPLC, according to CNN.
Beirich was allegedly living and romantically involved with the informant at the time, and had a joint bank account in which “between 2015 and 2021, approximately $140,000 in donors’ money flowed from the SPLC operating account,” per the initial indictment.
During a news conference at DOJ headquarters on Wednesday, U.S. Attorney Todd Blanche said Beirich 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,” he said. “This is exactly what we said would happen in a case like this, which is that our investigators and the US attorneys and the agents working the case will can keep on working it even after the initial indictment.”
For years, the group was allegedly funneling hundreds of thousands of donor dollars to hate groups like the neo-Nazi organization, the National Alliance, the National Socialist Party of America, members of the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations affiliated with the Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club.
“SPLC knowingly misled donors, who believed their money was being used to dismantle violent extremist organizations - when in fact, part of those donations were instead being used to pay senior leadership within those extremist groups,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a post on X.
He continued, “From at least 2007-2023, Beirich allegedly helped orchestrate this fraudulent activity worth approximately $4.2 million, conspiring with SPLC to defraud donors, obtaining money through these materially false and fraudulent pretenses and omissions to pay leadership of the very violent organizations SPLC claimed to oppose.”
Beirich’s attorney said that his client is innocent.
“Dr. Beirich is innocent, and this case is without merit,” her attorney, Michael J. Proctor, said, per CNN. “We believe the charges against her and the SPLC are politically motivated, and Dr. Beirich has been targeted in this case because of the important work she has done to combat hate groups and extremists.”
The nonprofit has pleaded not guilty and accused the DOJ of “targeting” them as part of retribution campaign against President Donald Trump’s political enemies.