DOJ Charges Southern Poverty Law Center With Bank Fraud (1)

The US Justice Department announced bank fraud charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center related to $3 million in payments the civil rights group allegedly made to informants of extremist groups including the Ku Klux Klan.

A federal grand jury in Alabama returned an 11-count indictment charging SPLC with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel said at a press conference Tuesday.

Blanche said the group created bank accounts under fictitious organization names to hide the source of payments between 2014 and 2023. As a nonprofit, the civil rights organization is required to operate with transparency and honesty, but misled donors and banks about its fundraising and spending, the acting attorney general said.

Instead of dismantling extremist groups, SPLC was “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred,” Blanche said.

The civil rights group disputed the claims.

“We are outraged by the false allegations levied against SPLC – an organization that for 55 years has stood as a beacon of hope fighting white supremacy and various forms of injustice to create a multi-racial democracy where we can all live and thrive,” Interim Chief Executive Officer Bryan Fair said in a statement. “The actions by the DOJ will not shake our resolve to fight for justice and ensure the promise of the Civil Rights movement becomes a reality for all.”

According to the indictment, the payments went to eight individuals affiliated with the Klan, United Klans of America, National Socialist Movement, the Aryan Nations affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, the Nationalist Socialist Party of America, the neo-nazi organization the National Alliance.

Patel said the investigation is ongoing.

SPLC’s Fair, in an earlier statement Tuesday, said the organization had used informants in the past, but has since halted the practice.

“These individuals risked their lives to infiltrate and inform on the activities of our nation’s most radical and violent extremist groups,” Fair said.

The group has long been criticized by conservatives, who claim right wing groups have been unfairly labeled as supporters of hate. In a statement posted to the social media site X in October of 2025, Patel said DOJ was officially cutting ties with the SPLC, which he accused of abandoning civil rights work and turning into “a partisan smear machine.”

(Updates with comment from Southern Poverty Law Center and details from press conference, indictment.)

To contact the reporters on this story:
Jimmy Jenkins in Washington at jjenkins199@bloomberg.net;
Chris Strohm in Washington at cstrohm1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Ben Bain at bbain2@bloomberg.net

Steve Stroth, Peter Blumberg

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