SPLC Allegedly Creates Shell Accounts to Secretly Pay Extremist Informants

According to a federal indictment filed in April 2026, the Southern Poverty Law Center began in 2014 using fictitious shell entities with separate bank accounts to funnel more than $3 million in donor funds to individuals embedded in violent extremist groups including the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, and National Socialist Party. The SPLC did not disclose the payments to donors, who were told their money funded civil rights and hate group monitoring, prosecutors alleged. The program continued until at least 2023.