(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted Tuesday on federal fraud charges alleging it improperly raised millions of dollars to secretly pay leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups for inside information, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
The Justice Department alleges the civil rights group defrauded donors by using their money to fund the very extremism it claimed to be fighting, with more than $3 million paid to informants through a now-defunct program to infiltrate white supremacist and other extremist groups. Prosecutors allege some of the money was used by extremists to carry out other crimes, but court papers did not include specific examples.
“The SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred,” Blanche said.
The civil rights group faces charges of wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in the case brought in the federal court in Alabama, where the organization is based.
🚨HAPPENING NOW: Justice Department announces indictment against Southern Poverty Law Center ("SPLC"). Our indictment alleges SPLC secretly funneled MORE THAN $3 MILLION in funds to members of white supremacist and extremist groups. pic.twitter.com/Ifpda94f7D
— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) April 21, 2026
The indictment came shortly after the SPLC revealed the existence of a criminal investigation into its disbanded informant program to gather intelligence on extremist group activities. The group said the program was used to monitor threats of violence and the information was often shared with local and federal law enforcement.
The SPLC said it “will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work” against what it described as false allegations. The group said its informant program saved lives.
“Taking on violent hate and extremist groups is among the most dangerous work there is, and we believe it is also among the most important work we do,” interim CEO and president 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.”
A program that dated back to the 1980s
The Justice Department alleges the SPLC made false statements to banks in order to set up accounts used to funnel money to informants. The group created bank accounts for fictitious entities such as “Fox Photography” and “Rare Books Warehouse” that were used to send money from donors to informants, in a scheme to conceal the money’s actual purpose, the indictment alleges.
Prosecutors say the group never disclosed to donors details of the informant program.
“They’re required to under the laws associated with a nonprofit to have certain transparency and honesty in what they’re telling donors they’re going to spend money on and what their mission statement is and what they’re raising money doing,” Blanche said.
The indictment includes details on at least nine unnamed informants were paid by the SPLC through a secret program that prosecutors say began in the 1980s.
Within the SPLC, they were known as field sources or “the Fs,” according to the indictment. The indictment listed several “Fs,” with the highest numbered one being “F-43”—implying that the SPLC’s network of spies numbered into at least the dozens.
One informant was paid more than $1 million between 2014 and 2023 while affiliated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance, the indictment said. Prosecutors say another informant was a member of the “online leadership chat group” that planned the 2017 white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The informant attended the rally at the direction of the SPLC, according to the indictment, and helped coordinate transportation for several others. That person was allegedly paid more than $270,000 between 2015 and 2013.
Headline USA was able to identify at least one of the informants: ‘F-39’ is likely former National Alliance accountant Randolph Dilloway. The indictment says he was paid $6,000 to take the blame for stealing documents. That information aligns with a lawsuit from around that time accusing Dilloway of being paid over $5,000 by the SPLC to steal documents.
I believe 'F-39' is former National Alliance accountant Randolph Dilloway.
The indictment says he was paid $6K to take the blame for stealing documents.
And sure enough, a lawsuit from that time accused Dilloway of being paid over $5,000 by the SPLC to steal documents. pic.twitter.com/hU5hUeabyi— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) April 22, 2026
Speculation continues to swirl about the possible identity of the other SPLC sources.
The SPLC said the program was kept quiet to protect the safety of informants. However, critics have noted that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have used the SPLC’s informant network to skirt constitutional restrictions on domestic surveillance.
For instance, about eight years after the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing, a leaked FBI memo revealed in 2003 that the SPLC had its own informants operating in an Oklahoman white supremacist compound called Elohim City, where OKC bomber Tim McVeigh was suspected to have visited.
The leaked January 1996 FBI memo said: “Information has also been received through the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) that [NAME REDACTED] telephone call from [Oklahoma City bomber] Timothy McVeigh on or about 4/17/95, two days prior to the OKBOMB attack, when [NAME REDACTED], per a source of the SPLC, was in the white supremacist compound at [Elohim City].”
Citing a “highly placed confidential source in the DOJ,” the journalists who obtained the memo reported in 2005 that the FBI had been using the SPLC as a surveillance cutout. The journalists, J.D. Cash and Roger Charles, said the FBI was using a spy network operated by the SPLC to do what many in the bureau were afraid to do because of guidelines in place during the Clinton administration.
“Attorney General Janet Reno would not allow the FBI much latitude in developing intelligence inside the far-right due to concerns that such activities might violate existing departmental guidelines on ‘domestic spying,’” J.D. Cash and Roger Charles wrote in July 2005 for the McCurtain Daily Gazette.
“To skirt Reno’s policies, the FBI developed a relationship with cutouts such as the SPLC that could use their own spies to do what the FBI could not. These non-government agents then passed their intelligence products back to the bureau.”
Because the OKC bombing suspects who had resided at Elohim City were never arrested in relation to the attack—as Headline USA reported here—Cash and Charles wondered whether the SPLC was helping the FBI conceal information about the case. Cash and Charles—the latter who worked a brief stint on McVeigh’s defense team—were developing the theory that the FBI was trying to conceal the fact that one of its informants had gone rogue and helped carry out the bombing.
The two investigators confronted SPLC founder Morris Dees with their suspicions, but Dees reportedly declined to divulge information.
“Dees admitted that he had an informant at Elohim City as the [FBI] teletype said. However, the coy attorney refused to elaborate on the situation, except to say he had warned then-attorney general Reno, six months before the attack, that, ‘An attack on the government is planned by members of the far right,’” Cash and Charles wrote in 2005.
“Dees went on to say that after the attack he immediately called Reno to say the media had it wrong. ‘I told her the attack was domestic, not foreign,’ Dees said.”
Dees was reportedly also confronted about the matter during a conference at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in 2003, but he also declined to comment at that time.
The SPLC had informants embedded in Elohim City, where the OKC bombing is suspected to have been planned by McVeigh and others who were never charged. https://t.co/gQY09S4hq5 pic.twitter.com/r6dntHNKTR
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) April 21, 2026
“If I told you what we were doing there, I would have to kill you,” Dees reportedly said in 2003.
More recently, the SPLC came under fresh scrutiny after the assassination last year of conservative activist Charlie Kirk brought renewed attention to its characterization of the group that Kirk founded and led. The SPLC included a section on that group, Turning Point USA, in a report titled “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024” that described the group as “A Case Study of the Hard Right in 2024.”
FBI Director Kash Patel said last year that the agency was severing its relationship with the SPLC, which had long provided law enforcement with research on hate crime and domestic extremism. Patel said the SPLC had been turned into a “partisan smear machine,” and he accused it of defaming “mainstream Americans” with its “hate map” that documents alleged anti-government and hate groups inside the United States.
House Republicans hosted a hearing centered on the SPLC in December, saying it coordinated efforts with President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration “to target Christian and conservative Americans and deprive them of their constitutional rights to free speech and free association.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
