BLM Activist Charged With Raiding Nonprofit Coffers, Pocketing $170,000 a Year

The Violence in Boston charity, founded by Cannon-Grant, gained traction at the height of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in 2020, after the police killing of black man George Floyd bolstered the racial justice movement across the US. However, of late, the organization had come under financial scrutiny.

Monica Cannon-Grant, a high-profile Black Lives Matter (BLM) activist in Boston, together with her husband, have been indicted by a federal grand jury on allegations they defrauded donors of the nonprofit they founded.

Cannon-Grant, 41, and Clark Grant, 38, were charged on Tuesday in an 18-count indictment alleging they spent financial donations to the nonprofit, Violence in Boston, committed unemployment fraud, and lied to a mortgage lender.

According to a statement from the US attorney’s office, Monica Cannon-Grant, CEO of the nonprofit, paid herself an estimated $2,788 per week, accumulating a nest egg of $25,096 in 2020 and $170,092 last year. Cash from the organisation, claimed prosecutors, had been funnelled to pay for the couple’s personal needs, such as hotel reservations, buying gas, restaurant outings, food deliveries, nail salon services, and personal travel. Furthermore, all of these transactions were ostensibly concealed from bookkeepers, directors, and financial auditors.

An approximate $100,000 in unemployment benefits they were not entitled to had allegedly been pocketed by the spouses, said the Massachusetts US Attorney Rachel Rollins’s office.

Monica Cannon-Grant had been released “on personal recognisance”, barred from applying for any loans, grants, or employment benefits and prohibited from working any position granting her access to an organisation’s finances.

An arraignment is expected next week.

FILE PHOTO: Protest for Amir Locke in Minneapolis

© STRINGER

Monica Cannon-Grant once stated in an Instagram post that she founded her charity in 2017 because somebody tried to shoot and kill her son, but the trigger jammed. She was supposedly prompted to start the organisation to help victims, which includes the shooters.

“You just don't wake up and want to harm someone… It comes from a place of hopelessness, it comes from PTSD,” she had said.

The nonprofit received significant attention since 2020, amid the racial awareness campaign that spread like wildfire across the US after the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police. The movement swelled for several weeks into June and July, drawing millions of people into the streets, and evolving into looting and pillaging, forcing state governments to mobilise tens of thousands of National Guard soldiers to control the demonstrations.

Cannon-Grant had garnered accolades for spearheading local demonstrations touting racial justice slogans, and was named one of the most powerful people in Boston by Boston magazine and a Bostonian of the Year in 2020 by The Boston Globe Magazine.