Monica Cannon-Grant, a Black Lives Matter (BLM) leader in Boston, and her husband, Clark Grant, were served with an 18-page federal indictment for fraud and conspiracy on Tuesday.
It’s alleged that Mr. and Mrs. Grant defrauded large amounts of money from over a million dollars in grants and donations to their non-profit organization, Violence in Boston. The couple is also alleged to have fraudulently collected more than a million dollars in federal unemployment benefits and lied on their mortgage application.
The indictment comes on the heels of news that the international parent organization of Black Lives Matter, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, is under investigation in several states for a lack of transparency in their massive fundraising operation.
Cannon-Grant’s attorney, Robert Goldstein, said “we are extremely disappointed the government rushed to judgment here” in a statement outside the courthouse.
“VIB (Violence in Boston) and Monica have been fully cooperating, and their production of records remains ongoing,” Goldstein said. “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.”
“We remain fully confident Monica will be vindicated when a complete factual record emerges,” he continued.
Oh, really? Perhaps the Grants could explain how some of that donation money was spent at expensive restaurants and nail salons, along with other vacation perks?
According to a trip proposal, the venture was “to give these young men exposure to communities outside of the violence-riddled neighborhoods that they navigate daily.”
Instead, the pair spared no expense on a vacation, according to federal authorities, eating a meal at a Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., buying merchandise at Walmart and taking visits to a nail salon among other expenditures.
Prosecutors also allege that Cannon-Grant told both the state attorney general’s office and the IRS that she took no salary from her nonprofit while paying herself $2,788 a week beginning in October 2020.
Because BLM was a loose network of organizations with no real hierarchical structure, it invited the fraudsters, the chiselers, and other crooks to take a seat at the table and eat heartily at some chapters. The amateurish management of many chapters was unable to develop systems to keep track of cash that was being dumped into the organizations faster than they could handle it. Large sums of money at some chapters have been lost due to poor bookkeeping rather than criminal activity.
CharityWatch Executive Director Laurie Styron said that the BLM Global Network Foundation was like a “giant ghost ship full of treasure drifting in the night with no captain, no discernible crew, and no clear direction.”
Not master criminals. Just street thugs hustling whitey for cash.
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