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.”

Former SPLC employee charged with fraud in paid informant case | Politics