A longtime CPA in Payette whose firm audited many school districts, cities and other government agencies was also secretly the author of “dozens of racist and anti-Semitic tracts” under the pseudonym Farnham O’Reilly, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports in the latest issue of its quarterly magazine, “Intelligence Report.” The article, by the group’s Intelligence Project director, Heidi Beirich, entitled “The Aryan Accountant,” reports that Timothy Folke was a member of the white supremacist National Alliance, espoused creating an “Aryan homeland,” and started a website to entice like-minded folks to move to his area; you can read the article here.

It also includes this rather startling editor’s note: “In April, after this story was completed, Timothy Folke again contacted the Intelligence Report to say that he had ‘experienced the loss of my wife and family’ and had ‘withdrawn from all activities dealing with the public, as well as all aspects of my previous profession and business.’ His CPA firm’s website was taken down, as were his own website and some of his racist writings. The Report contacted his son, Kurt Folke, who said that his father had only informed his family of his ‘deeply disturbing’ secret life the previous weekend, and confirmed that his parents were divorcing and his father had ‘retired from the firm.’ His father, he said, ‘is out of the picture and out of our family and our lives.’ Kurt Folke added: ‘He needs to reflect on what he’s done. He’s going to retire and reflect on what he’s done.’”

Kurt Folke, who now works at a new accounting firm in Payette, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.