Crime
Cannon-Grant was expected to stand trial next month.
Just weeks out from her trial on federal fraud charges, embattled Boston-based community organizer Monica Cannon-Grant has filed notice that she plans to plead guilty.
Friday’s one-page filing does not say whether Cannon-Grant intends to change her plea on some or all of her charges, or whether she has reached a plea deal with prosecutors. But according to the motion, prosecutors have agreed to Cannon-Grant’s request for a change-of-plea hearing.
A date for the hearing has not been set. Cannon-Grant’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday afternoon.
Her trial had been scheduled to begin in U.S. District Court in Boston Oct. 14.
Cannon-Grant shot to prominence through her leadership of the now-defunct Violence in Boston, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing violence, advocating against social injustices, and aiding community causes. She had received significant attention and accolades since 2020, when George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police bolstered a nationwide racial justice movement.
Behind the scenes, however, prosecutors allege Cannon-Grant and her late husband, Clark Grant, were defrauding people who donated to the nonprofit and instead spending the funds on hotels, gas, restaurants, food deliveries, nail salons, and travel.
The pair were indicted on numerous charges in 2022, but Clark Grant was killed in a motorcycle crash a year later.
The initial indictment accused Cannon-Grant and her husband not only of defrauding donors, but lying on a mortgage application and illegally collecting roughly $100,000 in unemployment benefits.
“Unemployment caught my ass!” Cannon-Grant allegedly texted her husband in March 2021. “Asked me to provide documents by June unless I’ll have to pay it all back.”
Additional fraud charges brought in 2023 accused the couple of leveraging their nonprofit for pandemic assistance and lying to obtain rent relief funds intended for Boston residents facing housing insecurity.
Cannon-Grant is charged in a 27-count superseding indictment with charges including conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud, making false statements on a mortgage application, and tax violations.
She could face decades in federal prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines if convicted.
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