Monica Cannon-Grant, a Boston-based activist and founder of nonprofit Violence in Boston, was sentenced to four years of probation and six months of home confinement on Thursday.
Cannon-Grant pleaded guilty in September 2025 to charges of wire fraud, mail fraud and failing to file tax returns. The Department of Justice said she defrauded the City of Boston and Suffolk County of thousands of dollars in Covid-19 relief and Community Reinvestment Grant funds.
The federal prosecutors initially asked for an 18-month sentence and three years of supervised release.
The charges against Cannon-Grant stretch back to March 2022, when she and her husband, Clark Grant, were indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with wire fraud, mail fraud, conspiracy and making false statements to a mortgage lending business.
In March 2023, the couple was charged with additional fraud charges. Just weeks later, Clark Grant died in a motorcycle accident and the charges were dismissed in May.
Before the fraud allegations, Cannon-Grant was a leading civil justice advocate in the Boston area and was named a leading Bostonian by several publications. She organized several protests in Boston during the 2020 social justice movement and the aftermath of the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor murders. She became an outspoken figure in highlighting instances of racial equity in Boston.
The government’s sentencing memorandum alleged that Cannon-Grant, her late husband and one of her sons collected more than $145,000 in pandemic unemployment aid while all three were employed.
The memorandum also states that she filed no tax returns in 2019 and 2020 and lied about her income on her 2017 and 2018 tax returns.
In May 2021, she collected more than $12,000 in city funds to pay for a $4,200-a-month apartment rental in East Boston.
In response to the fraud charges, Cannon-Grant contested some of the allegations and stated that she “used a substantial portion of the funds donated to support VIB’s state mission by among other things,” including paying for food for community members during the pandemic and supporting victims of violence in Boston.
Cannon-Grant founded Violence in Boston in 2017 with $1,000, according to the organization’s webpage. The organization’s mission was to reduce violence, raise social awareness and aid community causes in Greater Boston. While the website for the Hyde-Park-based 501(c)(3) organization remains live, the nonprofit has not submitted a required annual 990 filing since fiscal 2019, according to ProPublica.
In July 2022, the organization’s board of directors decided to shut down the organization.
Following Cannon-Grant’s guilty plea last September, U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley said that Cannon-Grant “betrayed the trust of everyone who donated and the public who supported her fraudulent charity.”
