Heidi Beirich was arrested in California after a superseding indictment charged her with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering tied to Southern Poverty Law Center payments to informants who infiltrated white supremacist groups. Prosecutors say she approved payments to a Ku Klux Klan imperial wizard and to another informant with whom she allegedly had a romantic relationship and shared a bank account that received about $140,000 in donor funds between 2015 and 2021. The SPLC, charged in April with bank fraud and money laundering offenses related to the same payment program, denies misleading donors and says the payments matched its mission; Beirich is the first named individual charged in the broader case.