A Black Lives Matter activist in Boston was ordered on March 23 to pay back more than $224,000 in pandemic relief funds and donations to her nonprofit.
Monica Cannon-Grant, 44, pleaded guilty last fall to multiple fraud charges and filing false tax returns. She was sentenced to serve six months of home confinement, 100 hours of community service, and four years of probation.
Federal District Court Judge Angel Kelly in Boston set the monetary judgment equal to the amount of money Cannon-Grant admitted taking from nonprofit Violence in Boston, which Cannon-Grant founded and where she formerly served as CEO.
In March 2023, a grand jury handed down a 27-count indictment against Cannon-Grant and her husband Clark Grant, charging them with fraud in connection to Violence in Boston, which they founded in 2017. Grant died in a motorcycle crash three weeks after the indictment was served while driving about 30 minutes east of Boston.
Federal prosecutors said Cannon-Grant paid herself about $25,100 in 2020 and more than $170,000 in 2021 from the nonprofit’s account, according to the charging documents.
About $181,037 of the total funds in question were donated to the organization and diverted for her personal use, $33,426 was obtained from pandemic unemployment assistance benefits, and $12,600 were from rental assistance funds, according to the judge.
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