A federal grand jury in Montgomery dropped an 11-count indictment on the Southern Poverty Law Center this week, accusing Alabama’s most notorious “anti-hate” nonprofit of quietly funneling more than $3 million in donor money to Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and white supremacist leaders — including the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America, the Tuscaloosa-based Klan outfit that once made the SPLC famous.
The indictment, six counts of wire fraud, four of making false statements to a federally insured bank, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, was announced in Washington by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel.
“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” Blanche said.
The case is being prosecuted out of the Middle District of Alabama by Acting U.S. Attorney Kevin Davidson and was randomly assigned to U.S. District Judge Emily Marks, a Trump appointee seated in Montgomery.
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Two civil forfeiture actions have already been filed to claw back proceeds.
Between 2014 and 2023, prosecutors allege, the SPLC paid at least eight informants, known internally as “field sources,” or simply “the Fs”, drawn from the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, the National Socialist Party of America, the Aryan Nations–affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, the American Front, and the neo-Nazi National Alliance.
To move the cash, the indictment says, the nonprofit set up bank accounts under fake corporate identities with names like “Fox Photography,” “Rare Books Warehouse,” and “Center Investigative Agency.” The money was allegedly routed through two accounts, then loaded onto prepaid debit cards and passed to the extremists.
The details are lurid.
One National Alliance member collected more than $1 million over nearly a decade, including, prosecutors say, payment for breaking into a rival extremist group’s headquarters and making off with 25 boxes of documents, which the SPLC later mined for stories on its Hatewatch website. Another informant, paid roughly $270,000 over eight years, allegedly helped coordinate transportation to the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, attending at the SPLC’s direction.
Interim SPLC CEO Bryan Fair said the group is “outraged by the false allegations” and cast the prosecution as political retaliation. Blanche said the investigation was opened years ago, shelved under President Biden, and revived after President Trump returned to office.
The SPLC built its fortune on a 1987 Mobile courtroom verdict that bankrupted the United Klans of America and cemented the group’s national reputation. Thirty-nine years later, a federal grand jury seated in the same state alleges the nonprofit was quietly writing six-figure checks to that same Klan’s Imperial Wizard.
Patel, who severed the FBI’s ties with the SPLC last fall, accused the organization Tuesday of running a “massive fraud operation” that enriched the extremists it publicly claimed to be fighting.
The indictment lands atop years of conservative pressure over the SPLC’s “hate map,” which has slotted mainstream Christian ministries and parental-rights groups alongside actual Klan chapters, and followed heightened scrutiny after the 2025 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whose Turning Point USA the SPLC had profiled as a case study in “the hard right.”
Fair insists the informant program saved lives. A Montgomery jury will get the final word.
Grayson Everett is the editor in chief of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @Grayson270.
