The Southern Poverty Law Center used donor money to pay Ku Klux Klan members $1,200 per month to remain with the racist organization despite their pleas to leave, according to a superseding DOJ indictment filed Tuesday.
The new charges expand on an April indictment that hit the SPLC with 11 counts of fraud related to allegedly making fraudulent payments to extremist groups as part of a supposedly “covert” informant scheme.
Two KKK members — identified as F-31 and F-32 — “feared for their safety from other Klan members and wanted out of the movement,” according to the filing. F-32 reached out to the SPLC after seeing media coverage about how the organization had previously “helped an individual leave an extremist organization.”
“ENCOURAGED F-31 AND F-32 TO STAY IN THE MOVEMENT AND OFFERED TO PAY THEM A $1,200.00 MONTHLY SALARY AS WELL AS TO PAY FOR EXPENSES AS INCURRED.”
Rather than help them exit, an SPLC employee “encouraged F-31 and F-32 to stay in the movement and offered to pay them a $1,200.00 monthly salary as well as to pay for expenses as incurred,” the DOJ alleged. After being “financially backed by the SPLC to do so,” the two KKK members “agreed to remain in the movement.”
The SPLC then allegedly created fake employment records, telling F-31 and F-32 to claim they worked for “Rare Books” helping college students research essays. “Neither F-31 nor F-32 ever researched or wrote any essays for any students, college or otherwise,” the indictment reads.
Per the DOJ, the alleged payment scheme “resulted in F-31 and F-32 being put in the type of dangerous situations that F-32 sought SPLC’s help to get away from in the first place.” The two used donor money to attend “extremist rallies in multiple states.”
The DOJ claimed the SPLC’s financial activities led to F-31 “rising from merely a group member to a leadership role within an extremist group” where the individual “recruited new members using donors’ money.”
F-32 similarly used donor funds to recruit new members. One SPLC employee even knew that F-32 “used donors’ money to purchase material to make Ku Klux Klan garments for others,” according to the indictment.
The DOJ alleged the SPLC “reimbursed” both F-31 and F-32 “with donor money for all expenses they incurred for cross-burning events to include the wood and fuel used.”
The SPLC also allegedly deployed similar tactics with a separate individual identified as “F-30” — who “led the National Socialist Party of America, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and was the leader of a faction of the Aryan Nations.” The SPLC allegedly paid F-30 more than $70,000 in donor funds from 2010-2016 to stay in the radical group, with F-30 using these funds to “travel to” and “host” extremist rallies, recruit new members, and “donate money to leaders of other extremist organizations.”
The SPLC pleaded not guilty to the charges brought in April. The case is currently being litigated in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama Northern Division.
1⃣NATIONAL ALLIANCE
SPLC paid over $1.2M to “F-9,” who was in a romantic relationship with an SPLC employee😲
While receiving SPLC donors’ money, F-9 also raised funds for the National Alliance.
🧵5/20 pic.twitter.com/nKQnEuWoIf
— Tyler O’Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) June 3, 2026
