Exclusive: Former Southern Poverty Law Center CFO arrested on fraud charges

By Hannah Rabinowitz, Holmes Lybrand, CNN

(CNN) — A former chief financial officer at 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 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.

“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 that were not accurate as 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.”

CNN reached out to Beirich and SPLC for comment.

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.

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 from for the SPLC, according to the indictment.

That person, prosecutors say, was paid over $1 million by the SPLC since 2007 and shared a bank account with Beirich which contained $140,000 from those payments.

This story is developing and will be updated.

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