The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted on 11 federal counts including wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced April 21, accusing the civil rights nonprofit of secretly funneling donor money to informants embedded in extremist groups.
According to the Los Angeles Times, prosecutors allege in the indictment that payments totaling more than $3 million were made between 2014 and 2023 to people with ties to the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, the National Socialist Party of America, and related white supremacist organizations. The indictment does not allege that funds went directly to the hate groups themselves.
"The SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred," Blanche said, according to ABC News.
Shell $SHEL accounts bearing names like Center Investigative Agency, Fox Photography, and Rare Books Warehouse were used to move the money, prosecutors allege, with donated funds ultimately loaded onto prepaid cards and passed to informants, according to the Los Angeles Times. The indictment charges the group with defrauding donors by not disclosing that their contributions would be used to pay active members of extremist groups.
