Former SPLC employee charged with fraud in paid informant investigation
A former employee of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been charged with fraud as part of a broader investigation into the far-left civil rights organization by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The DOJ announced Wednesday that a federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, has returned a second superseding indictment regarding fraud charges against the SPLC, which included adding a defendant. In April, the grand jury indicted the SPLC on 11 counts that included wire fraud, making false statements to a federally insured bank and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The new defendant was identified as Heidi L. Beirich, a 59-year-old resident of Palm Springs, California, who formerly worked at the SPLC. She is being charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to submit false statements to a federally insured bank.
According to this second superseding indictment, from 2007 to 2023, over $4 million in funds donated to the SPLC were secretly sent to persons associated with assorted violent extremist groups.
After the second indictment was unsealed on Tuesday, Beirich was served with an arrest warrant on Wednesday morning in the Central District of California.
“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 news conference 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 can keep on working it even after the initial indictment.”
Founded in 1971 and headquartered in Montgomery, the SPLC rose to prominence for its legal efforts against the Ku Klux Klan and tracking of white supremacist hate groups.
The SPLC has garnered controversy in recent years for its listing of several conservative Christian organizations as hate groups over their opposition to the LGBT movement. The man convicted of a 2102 shooting at the Family Research Council office in Washington, D.C., cited the SPLC's online resources in helping identify his target.
The April indictment alleged that the SPLC, without the knowledge or consent of their donors, sent donations “to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation, and the National Alliance.”
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, the indictment also stated that “the SPLC’s paid informants (‘field sources’) engaged in the active promotion of racist groups at the same time the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website.”
The payments to informants included $270,000 to an individual who was part 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 SPLC.” This person allegedly “made racist postings under the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.”
Other payments cited in the indictment included $1 million to an informant affiliated with the neo-Nazi organization National Alliance, over $300,000 to an officer in the Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, $140,000 to a former chairman of the National Alliance and $70,000 to a former National Socialist Party leader.
In response to the April indictment, SPLC Interim President and CEO Bryan Fair said in a video message that the payments were part of the organization’s “prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups.”
“This use of informants was necessary because we are no strangers to threats of violence,” Fair said. “For decades, we engaged in unprecedented litigation to dismantle the Klan and other hate groups.”
“In light of that work, we sought to protect the safety of our staff and the public. We frequently shared what we learned from informants with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI. We did not, however, share our use of informants broadly to protect the identity and safety of the informants and their families.”
Fair claimed the use of confidential informants “saved lives” and that “the federal government has been weaponized to dismantle the rights of our nation’s most vulnerable people and any organization like ours that tries to stand in the breach.”
“We will not be intimidated into silence or contrition and we will not abandon our mission or the communities we serve,” he stated.
