A former chief financial officer at the Southern Poverty Law Center has been arrested in California and for her alleged role in overseeing 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, according to a person familiar with the arrest.
The woman, Heidi Beirich, previously ran the SPLC’s project tracking hate groups in the US and allegedly “oversaw payments of donors’ money” to people inside of these hate groups, according to the indictment. Prosecutors say she shared a bank account with one of those sources, which included funds from the SPLC’s payments.
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.
The charges are part of the Justice Department’s case against the SPLC over the alleged payments, which prosecutors say were done without donor knowledge and through shell companies.
The SPLC has fought the case, arguing that the government is mischaracterizing a long-standing informant program designed to gather intelligence on hate groups. Attorneys for the SPLC have also said that law enforcement officials have used information gathered by the organization’s informants in the past.
