A grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on Tuesday. The 11 counts cover wire fraud, lying to a federally insured bank, and a conspiracy to launder money by concealing where it came from. Federal prosecutors in the Middle District of Alabama also filed two forfeiture actions, seeking to recover what they say are proceeds of the scheme.
The FBI investigated, with help from IRS Criminal Investigation. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced the case in Washington.
“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” Blanche said. “Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked. This Department of Justice will hold the SPLC and every other fraudulent organization operating with the same deceptive playbook accountable. No entity is above the law.”
The allegations
According to the indictment, the SPLC began running a covert network in the 1980s. It consisted of people tied to violent extremist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, or people who had infiltrated those groups at the SPLC’s direction. Donors did not know that some of their money went to leaders and organizers of racist groups, prosecutors say, even as the SPLC denounced those same groups on its website.
Between 2014 and 2023, the indictment says, the SPLC secretly sent more than $3 million in donated funds to people associated with violent extremist groups. Two are named in the Justice Department’s announcement: the Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, which is affiliated with Aryan Nations, and the National Socialist Party of America, also known as the American Nazi Party.
The aim of the scheme, according to the indictment, was to collect donations through materially false statements and omissions about how the money would be spent.
To pay the individuals without detection, prosecutors say, the SPLC opened bank accounts linked to a series of fictitious entities. That let it disguise the nature, source, ownership and control of the money. The SPLC also made a series of false statements about how those accounts operated, the indictment says, to keep the arrangement going.
Officials’ statements
Patel called it a “massive fraud operation to deceive their donors, enrich themselves, and hide their deceptive operations from the public.” He said the SPLC vowed to dismantle violent extremist groups and then paid their leaders, “even utilizing the funds to have these groups facilitate the commission of state and federal crimes.” He described the case as “an ongoing investigation against all individuals involved.”
Acting U.S. Attorney Kevin Davidson said donors gave in the belief that they were supporting the fight against violent extremism. “As alleged, the SPLC instead diverted a portion of those funds to benefit individuals and groups they claimed to oppose,” he said.
The SPLC is a nonprofit headquartered in Montgomery. Its website at the time described its mission as being a “catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond.” A conviction would result in forfeiture of financial gains from the alleged activity. The Justice Department noted that the details in the civil forfeiture complaint are allegations only.
