Ex-Southern Poverty Law Center official charged, accused of spending donor dollars on neo-Nazi informant boyfriend

A former official for the embattled Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was charged Wednesday with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to submit false statements to a federally insured bank and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.

The official allegedly oversaw donor money going to informants – behind donors’ backs – and was allegedly romantically involved with one of the informants, according to court documents.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) alleges in unsealed court documents that Heidi Beirich oversaw donor payments when more than $1.2 million in donations secretly went to field sources infiltrating hate groups. Beirich allegedly shared a house and multiple bank accounts with one of these field sources – referred to as “F-9” in the indictment – and used donors’ money to fund the couple’s personal living expenses.

F-9 infiltrated the neo-Nazi group known as the National Alliance at the SPLC’s direction, according to the indictment.

CNN reported on Wednesday that Beirich had been arrested in California over the charges.

Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed at an unrelated Wednesday press conference that an arrest and a new indictment were made against SPLC’s former chief financial officer and that he believes “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.”

A Grand Jury in Montgomery, Alabama charged the SPLC in April with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering, with the Trump DOJ stating that the SPLC secretly funneled over $3 million in donor money to individuals associated with hate groups.

The SPLC has said that it pays informants within hate groups to gather intelligence on them, but the Trump DOJ has accused the group of manufacturing the hate it purports to fight as it rakes in donor cash.

The DOJ stated in the Wednesday indictment that in 2014, F-9 broke into the headquarters of an extremist organization and stole documents. The indictment alleges that Beirich paid a different source roughly $6,000 in donor money to claim responsibility for the break-in.

Those stolen documents were then copied, and Beirich allegedly used them for a story published by the SPLC to solicit more donations, according to the indictment.

The indictment alleges the SPLC and Beirich, in violation of the law, “knowingly and willfully combined, conspired, confederated, agreed, and had a tacit understanding with each other and others known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to devise and intend to devise a scheme and artifice to defraud, and to obtain money and property, by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises, and by omissions of material facts, and, in so doing, caused to be transmitted in interstate commerce, by means of wire communications, certain signs and signals, in furtherance of the scheme and artifice to defraud.”

Beirich’s attorney, Michael J. Proctor, told CNN in a statement that “Dr. Beirich is innocent, and this case is without merit.”

The statement noted that Beirich left the SPLC over six years ago, according to the outlet.

“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 statement continued. “She welcomes the opportunity to present the truth in court.”