A high-profile social justice activist in Boston and her husband used a nonprofit they founded to scam at least $185,000 from donors who included a Black Lives Matter chapter and the local district attorney’s office, federal authorities allege.
Monica Cannon-Grant and Clark Grant allegedly treated their Violence in Boston organization as a personal piggy bank to pay for rent, shopping sprees, delivery meals, visits to a nail salon and a summer vacation trip to Maryland.
Cannon-Grant, 41, and Grant, 38, established the nonprofit in 2017, the same year she made headlines for helping organize a “Fight Supremacy” march in Boston following the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va.
In a 2019 interview, she boasted of having the personal cellphone numbers of then-Mayor Marty Walsh, now the US secretary of labor; the current mayor, Michelle Wu, who was a council member at the time; and the local district attorney.
The following year, she was named “Best Social Justice Advocate” by Boston magazine and one of the Boston Globe’s “Bostonians of the Year.”
One of the earliest victims of the alleged fraud scheme was the Cambridge, Mass., chapter of Black Lives Matter, according to an 18-count indictment unsealed against the couple in Boston federal court on Tuesday.
The BLM chapter made a $3,000 donation via PayPal to support Violence in Boston’s program to feed needy children in August 2017, only to have the money secretly transferred two days later to a bank account belonging to one of Cannon-Grant’s family members, the indictment says.
In June 2019, Cannon-Grant also took part in a ceremony at the Suffolk County (Mass.) District Attorney’s Office, where her nonprofit was awarded $6,000 in forfeited assets to take “10 at risk young men” from Boston’s crime-ridden Roxbury neighborhood to a three-day “Violence Prevention Retreat” in Philadelphia.
But instead of using the money that way, Cannon-Grant and her hubby — who at the time had balances of just $1.35 and $21.01 in their personal checking accounts, respectively — allegedly blew it on a trip to Columbia, Md., the following month.
The spending included more than $1,200 at a Sonesta Suites hotel, as well as hundreds more for a rental car, fuel, parking and meals at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Shake Shack and other restaurants in Connecticut, New Jersey and Maryland, according to the indictment.
At the time, the Suffolk DA was Rachael Rollins, who last year was named the US attorney for Massachusetts and whose office brought the charges against Cannon-Grant and her husband.
Rollins is recused from the case due to the Justice Department’s policy on conflicts of interest and declined to comment, a spokeswoman told the Boston Globe.
Black Lives Matter Cambridge didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
The couple’s alleged fundraising fraud allegedly accelerated in 2020 when their nonprofit began raking in donations of up to $50,000 a month, with some of the proceeds withdrawn in cash from ATMs or transferred to investment accounts at the Robinhood and E-Trade websites, according to the indictment.
Cannon-Grant and Grant are also accused of scamming a total of more than $100,000 in federal pandemic-related unemployment benefits.
During that time, she collected more than $27,000 in consulting fees for assisting an unidentified media company with “diversity, equity and inclusion” training and later paid herself a $2,788 weekly salary from Violence in Boston, and he had a full-time job with a commuter services company, according to the indictment,
At one point in March 2021, Cannon-Grant allegedly texted her husband, “Unemployment caught my a–! Asked me to provide documents by June unless I’ll have to pay it all back.”
Grant allegedly told her to have an unidentified associate write a letter falsely claiming that Violence in Boston’s headquarters was closed.
The associate — who previously created fake letters so the couple could qualify for housing benefits and also attend a Boston Celtics game on the basis of negative COVID-19 test results — didn’t draft that document but did prepare a back-dated, four-page letter that Grant allegedly used to scam unemployment payments, according to the indictment.
In addition, the couple is accused of using Violence in Boston assets to qualify for a mortgage to purchase a house in the Boston suburb of Taunton.
Cannon-Grant was arrested Tuesday and was released without bail following a court appearance at which the judge allowed her to continue working at Violence in Boston, which runs a twice-weekly food pantry, but said she can’t handle its finances, the Globe reported.
She declined to comment afterward but her lawyer, Robert Goldstein, accused prosecutors of having “rushed to judgment” and said Cannon-Grant and Violence in Boston “have been fully cooperating and their production of records remains ongoing.”
“Drawing conclusions from an incomplete factual record does not represent the fair and fully informed process a citizen deserves from its government, especially someone like Monica who has worked tirelessly on behalf of her community,” Goldstein said in a prepared statement.
“We remain fully confident Monica will be vindicated when a complete factual record emerges.”
The arraignment of her husband, who was busted last year in the alleged pandemic-relief and mortgage scams, has yet to be scheduled, according to the Boston US Attorney’s Office.