Exclusive: Former Employee at Southern Poverty Law Center Arrested on Fraud Charges

A former employee of the Southern Poverty Law Center has been arrested in California on charges that she oversaw secret payments to informants inside of White supremacist groups, one of whom she was allegedly living with and had a romantic relationship with at the time.

The woman, Heidi Beirich, previously ran the SPLC’s project tracking hate groups in the US. The Justice Department has alleged that the program, which is no longer running, defrauded donors who did not realize they were helping to pay individuals inside the same groups that the SPLC aimed to root out.

Beirich allegedly “oversaw payments of donors’ money” to people inside of these hate groups, according to an indictment unsealed Wednesday. She also allegedly shared a bank account with one of those sources, which included funds from the SPLC’s payments.

“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.”

Beirich has been charged as part of a superseding indictment with wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to submit false statements to a federally insured bank and conspiracy to conceal money laundering.

A lawyer for Beirich denied wrongdoing on her part.

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Despite her role in overseeing the payments — some of which were directed to an Imperial Wizard in the KKK — Beirich allegedly had a romantic relationship with one source who infiltrated a White Supremacy group and stole documents for the SPLC, according to the indictment.

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