Southern Poverty Law Center Indicted on Federal Fraud Charges
A federal grand jury in Alabama indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on 11 counts Tuesday, charging the civil rights nonprofit with defrauding donors through a concealed program that paid members of the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel said.
SPLC paid roughly $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to eight people tied to the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, the National Socialist Party of America, the Aryan Nations-linked Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, and America First.
One recipient, described as a leader of the group that organized the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was paid about $270,000 over eight years, Blanche said.
“The SPLC was not dismantling these groups,” Blanche said. “It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”
Prosecutors allege payments moved through at least five sham entities, including Center Investigative Agency, Fox Photography, North West Technologies, Tech Writers Group, and Rare Books Warehouse, before being loaded onto prepaid debit cards.
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/doj-todd-blanche-kash-patel/2026/04/21/id/1253728/
