Former SPLC Finance Officer Arrested on Fraud Charges over Payments to White Supremacist Informants

A former chief financial officer for the Southern Poverty Law Center who was tasked with overseeing the group’s controversial project tracking “hate groups” in the U.S. was arrested on Wednesday, as part of the Department of Justice’s larger investigation into the SPLC.

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Heidi Beirich was arrested in California on charges that she oversaw secret payments to informants inside of white supremacist groups — including payments to an informant whom she was allegedly romantically involved with. 

Prosecutors say Beirich, who has not worked at the SPLC for several years, was previously in charge of overseeing “payments of donors’ money” to people inside the hate groups.

But Beirich also allegedly had a romantic relationship with one informant who infiltrated a white supremacist group and stole documents for the SPLC, according to the indictment. The pair also shared a bank account, prosecutors say, which included $140,000 in funds from the SPLC’s payments.

The SPLC paid the informant more than $1 million in total.

“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 told reporters on Wednesday. “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 keep on working it even after the initial indictment.”

Beirich is facing charges of wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to submit false statements to a federally insured bank and conspiracy to conceal money laundering.

Beirich’s attorney told CNN she is “innocent” and argued the case is “without merit.” He also said his client has not worked for the SPLC in more than six years.

“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,” said her attorney, Michael J. Proctor.

“Dr. Beirich won’t be silenced or intimidated by the government’s false and politicized allegations now,” he added. “She welcomes the opportunity to present the truth in court.”

Beirich is the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, according to the Associated Press, which describes her as a “political extremism expert.”

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The SPLC was indicted on federal charges back in April for quietly paying more than $3 million to informants with several extremist groups. Blanche alleged at the time that the group had defrauded donors by using their money to secretly pay informants inside extremist organizations.

Blanche says the SPLC was “doing the exact opposite of what it told its donors it was doing — not dismantling extremism, but funding it.” He also accused the group of “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.”

The Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally became an inciting incident for a massive rush of support for the SPLC — and prosecutors now say the group paid more than $270,000 to an informant who was a member of the leadership group that planned the event.

One “field source” for the SPLC “was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virginia, and attended the event at the direction of the S.P.L.C,” according to prosecutors. The antisemitic rally had hundreds of participants and saw a protester drive his car into a group of counterprotesters, killing one woman and leaving at least 19 others injured. The rally was held amid controversy over the removal of Confederate monuments, which local governments opted to take down in the wake of the Charleston church shooting. In 2015, a white supremacist shot and killed nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

The SPLC informant, whose salary from the group was paid out between 2015 and 2023, “made racist postings under the supervision of the S.P.L.C. and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees,” prosecutors said.

The SPLC’s revenue increased by roughly $80 million in the wake of the rally, from $51 million in October 2016 to $133 million in October 2017, according to Fox News.

Now, the group faces charges of wire fraud, false statements to a bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Bryan Fair, SPLC’s interim chief executive, has dismissed the charges as “false allegations.” He previously said the indictment “will not shake our resolve to fight for justice and ensure the promise of the civil rights movement becomes a reality for all.”

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