Boston activist, ex-nonprofit director pleads guilty to fraud charges
- Monica Cannon-Grant pleaded guilty to 18 counts of fraud, including misrepresentations to obtain donations for her non-profit and using funds for personal expenses.
Monica Cannon-Grant, the former leader of the Violence in Boston nonprofit, pleaded guilty in federal court on Monday to more than a dozen charges of fraud linked to her non-profit, COVID-19 relief funds and tax filings.
Federal officials say the 44-year-old from Taunton made misrepresentations to get thousands of dollars in donations to the Violence in Boston non-profit that she then used for personal expenses.
Cannon-Grant defrauded the City of Boston out of pandemic relief funds, rental assistance money, defrauded the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office out of Community Reinvestment Grant funds, filed false tax returns for two years and failed to file tax returns for two years, officials said.
She pleaded guilty to 18 counts and her sentencing hearing is set for Jan. 29, 2026. Officials charged Cannon-Grant and her husband, Clark Grant, in a 27-count indictment in March 2023. Grant's charges were dismissed in May 2023 due to his death.
Violence in Boston was an anti-violence nonprofit founded in 2017 with the goal of reducing violence, raising social awareness and aiding community causes in Greater Boston.
From 2017 to 2020, Cannon-Grant represented herself as an uncompensated nonprofit director to donors and other charitable organizations, officials said.
Instead, she and her late husband agreed to use their control over the nonprofit's accounts and funds to pay for personal expenses by taking nonprofit funds through cash withdrawals, cashed checks, wire transfers to personal bank accounts and debit purchases.
Cannon-Grant diverted thousands of dollars of donor money intended for the nonprofit for her personal use, officials said.
She used the nonprofit to defraud the City of Boston's Resiliency Fund, and received about $53,977 in pandemic relief funds, but withdrew about $30,000 in cash and made deposits in her personal checking account and made payments on her personal auto loan and car insurance policy.
She also conspired to defraud the city's Office of Housing Stability by concealing thousands of dollars of income to get $12,600 in rental assistance, officials said.
Cannon-Grant and her husband also conspired to defraud the state's Department of Unemployment Assistance by submitting fraudulent applications for pandemic unemployment assistance.
False tax returns were filed by Cannon-Grant in 2017 and 2018 and she failed to file tax returns in 2019 and 2020, officials said.
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