The SPLC has been indicted on 11 counts of allegedly paying extremist members of the group

FBI Director Kash Patel and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on Tuesday an indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), accusing the far-left nonprofit of fraudulently paying members of extremist groups.

A grand jury in the Middle District of Alabama returned an 11-count indictment against the SPLC with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to Blanche.

The SPLC is a non-profit organization that claims to fight white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on extremist groups, and conducts research to inform law enforcement in order to dismantle the groups.

Blanche said the SPLC was paying approximately $270,000 to a member of the lead group that organized the United the Right protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, which resulted in one death and dozens of injuries.

He added that between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC paid at least $3 million to eight people, three of whom are alleged to be members of the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, the National Socialist Movement, the Aryan Nations affiliate of the Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, the Nationalist Socialist Party of America Nazis and the American Front.

“It was doing the opposite of what it told its sponsors that it was doing, not ending the extremes, but funding them to carry out this program,” said Blanche. “The SPLC created bank accounts in the name of at least five fictitious organizations that had no employees of integrity or legitimate business purposes.”

“This money from the SPLC was deposited into a second fake account, then put into credit cards to be given to members of extremist groups,” he continued. “This was designed to protect the source of those funds, and because of this, the SPLC was also charged with one count, as I said earlier, of conspiracy to launder money.”

Patel said the FBI’s investigation revealed that the SPLC also tried to hide their criminal activities in financial banking networks.

“They are setting up shell companies and organizations around America so that the financial institutions that we as Americans rely on every day are duped into believing that the money was not coming from the Southern Poverty Law Center to carry out this scheme and fraud, but rather from fictitious organizations,” said Patel. “They stood up and continued this ongoing scam. This is a serious and bad violation of a group that said it was disbanding extremist groups, but in fact it fueled that hatred.”