Federal authorities arrested the former chief financial officer at the Southern Poverty Law Center on Wednesday, accusing her of signing off on fraudulent bank payments that have put the storied civil rights organization in the Justice Department’s crosshairs.
Heidi Beirich was arrested in California and made her first court appearance, then was released after a magistrate judge denied the government’s request that she be detained.
The new indictment alleges she was in a romantic relationship with one of the members of a hate group. The SPLC was paying the member as an informant, the indictment says, and Ms. Beirich oversaw the payments to her paramour.
They lived together, and some of the money paid to the informant even ended up in a joint bank account they shared, the indictment charges.
Michael Proctor, Ms. Beirich’s lawyer, blasted the case.
“She has dedicated her life to fighting the KKK, neo-Nazi groups, extremists. And for all of that life’s work, we’re all safer. We’re all better as a community,” he said, according to The Associated Press. “It is not just ironic, but terrible, that for this work she’s been indicted by the current Department of Justice.”
Attorney General Todd Blanche revealed the arrest at a press conference on a different subject, saying she was part of the broader bank fraud that sparked a criminal case against the SPLC in general.
“She was part of the effort to open bank accounts in completely fictitious companies’ names and make payments to individuals for reasons that were not accurate,” he said.
The broad case alleges that the SPLC used funds raised for the purpose of combatting white supremacy to pay people, in some white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, ostensibly to act as informants.
The Justice Department said the organization opened bank accounts in fake names to hide that it was the source of the payment. That, the department said, is a type of bank fraud.
A federal judge last week rebuffed the SPLC’s effort to have the case tossed as a vindictive prosecution.
Ms. Beirich, 59, was charged individually as part of the broader case against the SPLC.
Mr. Blanche said the indictment shows investigators are still building out the case against the civil rights organization.
“This is exactly what we said would happen in a case like this,” he told reporters.
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