Tag: blacklivesmatter

Boston BLM Fraudster and “Bostonian of the Year” Must Return $220K in Funds Stolen Through Fraud

The Gateway Pundit reported that Monica Cannon-Grant, 44, a Boston-based Black Lives Matter activist who stole more than $100,000 in COVID funds and other financial resources to fund her lavish lifestyle, was sentenced to ZERO jail time.

Instead, she got six months of home confinement, followed by four years of probation.

Cannon-Grant is the founder and former Chief Executive Officer of a Boston-based nonprofit who was sentenced in January in federal court in Boston for using thousands of dollars in donations to Violence in Boston (VIB) to pay for personal expenses; defrauding the City of Boston out of COVID-19 relief funds and rental assistance money; defrauding the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office out of Community Reinvestment Grant funds; filing false tax returns; and failing to file tax returns for two years.

Cannon-Grant was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley to four years’ probation, with six months of home detention and 100 hours of community service.

She was also ordered to pay restitution of $106,003 as well as forfeiture in an amount to be decided at a later date.

Now, a federal judge has ordered her to pay back an additional $224,063.

Keep reading

BLM Activist Ordered to Pay Back $224,000 in COVID Relief Funds, Donations

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.

Keep reading

Court Backs First-Grader in Suit Over School Reaction to ‘Any Life’ Matters Drawing

Can a “schoolyard dispute” warrant federal court intervention? Do first-graders have First Amendment rights? The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit just gave a resounding yes to both questions.

The case centers on a first-grader identified in court documents as B.B. After her teacher read a story about Martin Luther King Jr., B.B. drew a picture of her and her multiracial friend group. “Black Lives Mater [sic] any life,” it said. Sweet, right?

Apparently not to the administrators at Viejo Elementary School in California’s Capistrano Unified School District. The school’s principal, Jesus Becerra, spoke with B.B. about her drawing, allegedly telling her that it was inappropriate. According to B.B., she was also barred from recess for two weeks.

B.B.’s mother, Chelsea Boyle, sued, alleging that her daughter’s First Amendment rights had been violated.

A federal district court sided with the school and Becerra, holding that B.B.’s drawing was not protected by the First Amendment. “This schoolyard dispute—like most—does not warrant federal court intervention,” wrote U.S. District Judge David O. Carter in the court’s 2024 opinion.

Now, the 9th Circuit has weighed in and reversed course. “We hold that elementary students’ speech is protected by the First Amendment,” the appeals court ruled, vacating the lower court’s decision and sending the case back for reconsideration.

“Schools may restrict students’ speech only when the restriction is reasonably necessary to protect the safety and well-being of its students,” the 9th Circuit judges wrote.

Keep reading

School Branded 1st Grader ‘RACIST’ Over ‘Any Life Matters’ Drawing; Court Slams Principal

When a 7-year-old’s heartfelt sketch promoting equality gets twisted into “racism” by leftist school officials, it’s a chilling sign of how far indoctrination has gone—now finally overturned in a resounding First Amendment victory.

This case exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of progressive education: punishing a child for daring to change “Black Lives Matter” into a message of universal value, all while claiming to champion inclusion.

In 2021, at Viejo Elementary School in California, a first grader identified as BB created a simple drawing after her class learned about Martin Luther King Jr. and “Black Lives Matter.” The artwork showed four oval shapes in shades from orange to brown, representing friends holding hands, with the words “Black Lives Mater” above and “any life” below.

BB gifted it to a black classmate in a show of friendship. The child thanked her and showed no signs of offense. But the child’s mother complained to Principal Jesus Becerra, writing, “My husband and I will not tolerate any more messages given to our daughter because of her skin color. As the administrator we trust you know the actions that need to be taken to address this issue.”

Becerra confronted BB, telling her the drawing was “not appropriate” and “racist,” according to her account. He allegedly forced an apology, banned her from recess for two weeks, and prohibited her from giving drawings to classmates—without notifying her parents.

BB didn’t even fully understand “Black Lives Matter,” but added “any life” because she believed “all lives matter.” This innocent twist on the slogan clashed with the school’s apparent BLM doctrine, turning a gesture of friendship into a so called ‘microaggression’.

The family eventually sued the Capistrano Unified School District in 2023, but a lower court dismissed the case, with U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ruling that BB’s drawing “trampled on her classmate’s right to be left alone in school” and, remarkably, that First Amendment protections didn’t apply to such young students.

Keep reading

FBI strategy memo on election violence raises questions about double standard between J6, BLM riots

When the FBI prepared on the eve of the 2020 presidential election for possible violence in case of a disputed election, it made no distinction between left and right-wing groups when it recommended prosecutions to deter illegal activity. 

Yet, months later, there was a disparity in how the FBI, the Justice Department, and local prosecutors were treating illegal activity during the breach of the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021, compared to the summer of 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.  

An FBI memo reported on by Just the News earlier this week shows the bureau’s Boston office led a tabletop exercise and culled open-source intelligence on the potential for violence from both left-leaning anarchists to right-leaning extremists. It recommended relying on undercover informants and aggressive prosecutions for minor crimes to keep tabs on potentially violent groups and deter them. 

90% of 2020 BLM protesters were not jailed, but 84.6% of J6 rioters convicted

The document raises new questions for congressional investigators about why the bureau failed to heed its own warnings ahead of the Capitol riot and whether it provides further evidence there was a double standard in federal prosecutions. 

News outlets have reported for years on the fact that a vast majority of cases against protesters who broke the law during the fiery and violent summer of 2020 were dropped, especially by localities. A 2021 analysis from The Guardian found that this happened in about 90% of cases across a dozen U.S. jurisdictions that experienced protests. 

In Houston, one of the epicenters of protests in Texas, about 93% of all charges brought were dropped, The Guardian reported. This is despite the fact that the demonstrators blocked a federal highway, threw objects at police officers, and damaged buildings. Eight officers were also injured. In Philadelphia, where protesters smashed windows, looted stores, and set fire to police cars, at least 95% of the arrests resulted in no prosecutions or dropped charges.

Many of these cases were handled by local prosecutors. In the more than 300 federal cases brought against those involved in the protests, fewer than half pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial, the Associated Press found.  

Conversely, more than 1,500 individuals were arrested in connection with the Capitol riot, resulting in 1,270 total convictions–making that outcome about 80% of the cases–on the eve of President Donald Trump’s sweeping pardon last year. That comes out to about 86%.

Federal prosecutors also used a controversial statute that allowed them to prosecute some of those who were charged with obstructing an official proceeding for interrupting the Jan. 6 congressional certification of the electoral college vote. The statute was also used in some of the charges levied against President Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith in his case arguing Trump was directly responsible for the violence that day. 

That interpretation of the statute, which Republicans often pointed to as evidence of the double standard of aggressive prosecutions, was eventually struck down by the Supreme Court in June 2024. The high court ruled that the law only applied when a defendant prevented the use of “records, documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding.”

Keep reading

Boston BLM Fraudster Who Scammed More Than $100,000 Gets Sentenced to ZERO Jail Time

Monica Cannon-Grant is a Boston based Black Lives Matter activist who stole more than $100,000 in COVID funds and other financial resources to fund her lavish lifestyle. She was just sentenced to ZERO jail time.

She got six months of home confinement, followed by four years of probation.

Democrats just spent more time than that saying ‘no one is above the law’ over and over and over again. It seems some people are actually above the law.

This is from the U.S. Attorneys Office in Massachusetts:

Former Bostonian of the Year Sentenced for Fraud

The founder and former Chief Executive Officer of a Boston-based nonprofit was sentenced today in federal court in Boston for using thousands of dollars in donations to Violence in Boston (VIB) to pay for personal expenses; defrauding the City of Boston out of COVID-19 relief funds and rental assistance money; defrauding the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office out of Community Reinvestment Grant funds; filing false tax returns; and failing to file tax returns for two years.

Monica Cannon-Grant, 44, of Taunton, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley to four years’ probation, with six months of home detention and 100 hours of community service. She was also ordered to pay restitution of $106,003 as well as forfeiture in an amount to be decided at a later date. The government recommended a sentence of 18 months in prison.

From 2017 through at least 2020, Cannon-Grant represented herself as an uncompensated VIB director to donors and other charitable institutions when, in reality, she and her late husband agreed to utilize their control over VIB’s accounts and funds to pay for personal expenditures through cash withdrawals, cashed checks, wire transfers to personal bank accounts and debit purchases. Cannon-Grant also applied for, and certified the applications for, grants offered by public and private entities that included materially false representations. For example, Cannon-Grant conspired to use VIB to defraud the Boston Resiliency Fund (BRF), a charitable fund established by the City of Boston to provide aid to Boston residents during the COVID-19 pandemic. After receiving approximately $53,977 in pandemic relief funds, Cannon-Grant withdrew approximately $30,000 in cash from the VIB bank account, made deposits of $5,200 and $1,000 into her personal checking account, and made payments on her personal auto loan and car insurance policy. Cannon-Grant did not disclose any of these personal expenses to BRF and, instead, falsely reported to BRF that all of its grant funds had been appropriately expended.

Cannon-Grant also conspired to defraud Boston’s Office of Housing Stability by concealing thousands of dollars of household income in order to obtain $12,600 in rental assistance from the City of Boston. Instead of truthfully reporting accurate information about the family’s earnings and benefits, Cannon-Grant and her late husband misrepresented their actual household income to obtain rent relief funds that were intended to aid Boston residents who were facing housing insecurity.

This is outrageous.

Keep reading

Executive Director of Black Lives Matter Oklahoma Charged with Wire Fraud and Money Laundering – 25 Counts Total – Facing DECADES in Prison

An executive director of Black Lives Matter Oklahoma was charged with wire fraud and money laundering.

A federal grand jury on December 3 returned a 25-count indictment against Tashella Sheri Amore Dickerson, 52.

Dickerson was charged with 20 counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering.

“On December 3, 2025, a federal Grand Jury returned a 25-count Indictment, charging Dickerson with 20 counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering. For each count of wire fraud, Dickerson faces up to 20 years in federal prison, and a fine of up to $250,000. For each count of money laundering, Dickerson faces up to ten years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 or twice the amount of the criminally derived property involved in the transaction,” the DOJ said.

According to the charging documents, Dickerson, through BLMOKC, raised more than $5.6 million, but rather than using the money to bail out George Floyd rioters, she used millions to fund her lavish lifestyle.

Federal prosecutors said Dickerson funneled over $3.5 million to her personal accounts and spent it on vacations, six properties in Oklahoma City, retail shopping, and food.

Per the DOJ:

A federal grand jury Indictment has been unsealed, charging TASHELLA SHERI AMORE DICKERSON, 52, of Oklahoma City, with wire fraud and money laundering, announced U.S. Attorney Robert J. Troester.

According to the Indictment, beginning in at least 2016, Dickerson served as the Executive Director of Black Lives Matter OKC (BLMOKC). As Executive Director, Dickerson had access to BLMOKC’s bank, PayPal, and Cash App accounts.

The Indictment alleges that, although BLMOKC was not a registered tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, it accepted charitable donations through its affiliation with the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ), based in Arizona. AFGJ served as a fiscal sponsor to BLMOKC and required BLMOKC to use its funds only as permitted by Section 501(c)(3). AFGJ also required BLMOKC to fully account upon request for the disbursement of all funds received and prohibited BLMOKC from using its funds to purchase real estate without AFGJ’s consent.

Beginning in late spring 2020, BLMOKC raised funds to support its social justice mission from online donors, as well as from national bail funds. In total, BLMOKC raised more than $5.6 million, which included grants from national bail funds, including the Community Justice Exchange, Massachusetts Bail Fund, and Minnesota Freedom Fund. Most of those funds were routed through AFGJ, as fiscal sponsor, to BLMOKC.

According to the Indictment, BLMOKC was supposed to use these national bail fund grants to post pretrial bail for individuals arrested in connection with protests for racial justice after the death of George Floyd. When bail funds were returned to BLMOKC, the national bail funds sometimes allowed BLMOKC to keep all or a portion of the grant funding to establish a revolving bail fund, or for BLMOKC’s social justice mission, as permitted by Section 501(c)(3).

Despite the stated purpose of the money raised, and the terms and conditions of the grants, the Indictment alleges that beginning in June 2020 and continuing through at least October 2025, Dickerson embezzled funds from BLMOKC’s accounts for her personal benefit. The Indictment alleges Dickerson deposited at least $3.15 million in returned bail checks into her personal accounts, rather than into BLMOKC’s accounts. Among other things, Dickerson then used these funds to pay for:

  • recreational travel to Jamaica and the Dominican Republic for herself and her associates;
  • tens of thousands of dollars in retail shopping;
  • at least $50,000 in food and grocery deliveries for herself and her children;
  • a personal vehicle registered in her name; and
  • six real properties in Oklahoma City deeded in her own name or in the name Equity International, LLC, an entity she exclusively controlled.

The Indictment further alleges that Dickerson used interstate wire communications to submit two false annual reports to AFGJ on behalf of BLMOKC. Dickerson reported that she had used BLMOKC funds only for tax-exempt purposes. She did not disclose that she used funds for her personal benefit.

Keep reading

FBI Agents Sue Kash Patel After Being Fired Over BLM Support — Claim Kneeling ‘Saved American Lives’

A group of former FBI agents has filed a lawsuit against Director Kash Patel and the federal government after being fired for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.

The dozen agents complained that almost immediately upon becoming director of the bureau, Patel began working to terminate all agents who had kneeled in support of the movement.

The lawsuit also claims the agents would not have been fired had they had the same perceived political affiliations as those involved in the January 6th protests.

Mary Dohrmann, senior counsel at Washington Litigation Group, told POLITICO that Patel was guilty of “targeting these patriotic and highly skilled FBI agents for purely partisan reasons.”

“These partisan firings are the true weaponization of government,” she continued. “The nation is less safe as a result.”

The lawsuit details how the agents were patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C., on June 4, 2020, in response to Black Lives Matter riots sparked by the death of George Floyd several weeks earlier.

The agents were allegedly confronted by a mob that included “hostile” individuals and young children.

The lawsuit claims that the agents took a knee in a supposed effort to de-escalate the situation:

Plaintiffs were performing their duties as FBI Special Agents, employing reasonable de-escalation to prevent a potentially deadly confrontation with American citizens: a Washington Massacre that could have rivaled the Boston Massacre in 1770.

…

Plaintiffs demonstrated tactical intelligence in choosing between deadly force, the only force available to them as a practical matter, given their lack of adequate crowd control equipment, and a less-than-lethal response that would save lives and keep order.

…

As a result of their tactical decision to kneel, the mass of people moved on without escalating to violence. Plaintiffs did not need to discharge their firearms that day. Plaintiffs saved American lives.

The agents were dismissed back in September, with Patel citing their “unprofessional conduct and a lack of impartiality in carrying out duties, leading to the political weaponization of government.”

Keep reading

Justice Department Launches Investigation Into Whether Black Lives Matter Leaders Defrauded Donors

The Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether Black Lives Matter leaders defrauded donors of tens of millions of dollars.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF) raised over $90 million in 2020 during and after the George Floyd riots. They also raised more than $75 million in 2021.

The donations to BLMGNF have significantly dwindled in recent years because the majority of the public no longer supports Black Lives Matter.

The Associated Press reported that DOJ prosecutors have already issued subpoenas and “at least one search warrant.”

No other details about the investigation were released.

Fox News also reported that prosecutors are investigating BLM leaders.

AP reported:

The Justice Department is investigating whether leaders in the Black Lives Matter movement defrauded donors who contributed tens of millions of dollars during racial justice protests in 2020, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

In recent weeks, federal law enforcement officials have issued subpoenas and at least one search warrant as part of an investigation into the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. and other Black-led organizations that helped spark a national reckoning on systemic racism, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss an ongoing criminal probe by name and spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press.

It was not clear if the investigation would result in criminal charges, but its mere existence invites fresh scrutiny to a movement that in recent years has faced criticism about its public accounting of donations they have received. The recent burst of investigative activity is also unfolding at a time when civil rights groups have raised concerns about the potential for the Trump administration to target a broad variety of progressive and left-leaning groups that have been critical of him, including those affiliated with BLM, the transgender rights movement and anti-ICE protesters.

Last year the former head of Black Lives Matter Atlanta was sentenced to prison for stealing donations to fund his lavish lifestyle.

Tyree Conyers-Page was sentenced to 42 months in prison after he was found guilty on one count of wire fraud and three counts of money laundering

Keep reading

Venezuelan Narco Regime Under Nicolás Maduro Provided Over $20 Million to Fund Black Lives Matter, According to Washington Examiner

The Washington Examiner has uncovered deep connections between the Chavista regime in Venezuela and Black Lives Matter (BLM), an organization that presents itself as a defender of racial rights but, according to documented evidence, has served as a vehicle for foreign Marxist agendas.

It all began in late 2012, when Hugo Chávez, the eternal father of 21st-century socialism, ordered the delivery of at least $20 million in suitcases filled with cash to Opal Tometi, one of the three co-founders of BLM alongside Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza.

According to a former high-ranking Venezuelan official who defected and witnessed the meeting, the purpose was to «project the Bolivarian revolutionary project onto the streets of the United States,» meaning to sow chaos and division to erode American democracy from within.

This testimony does not come out of nowhere. The defector, close to Chávez’s inner circle, described a meeting in Caracas where Tometi arrived accompanied by three other African American women and actor Danny Glover, a known sympathizer of communist regimes like those in Cuba and Venezuela.

On his deathbed due to cancer, Chávez saw BLM as the perfect tool to export his anti-imperialist ideology.

Notably, BLM had already emerged in 2013, spurred by the Trayvon Martin case, but its ideological roots are steeped in declared Marxism: Cullors identifies as a «trained Marxist,» and Tometi has invoked figures like Assata Shakur, a convicted fugitive for murder living in exile in Cuba.

Keep reading