Accused Boston Black Lives Matter charity fraudster Monica Cannon-Grant plans to alter her plea in her federal case.
“The defendant, Monica Cannon-Grant, respectfully requests that the Court schedule a change of plea hearing, pursuant to Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure,” a brief submitting in Cannon-Grant’s docket states. “The defendant requests that the hearing be scheduled on a date convenient for the Court and the parties.”
A Rule 11 listening to means a defendant who has beforehand pleaded not responsible — like Cannon-Grant — intends to plead responsible or no contest to the costs.
Cannon-Grant was charged alongside her husband Clark Grant in 2022 with 18 fraud-related counts relating to the misuse of funds donated to the couple’s charity, Violence in Boston. Federal prosecutors subsequently issued a superseding indictment charging them with 27 counts. Clark Grant has since died and the costs towards him have been dropped.
Cannon-Grant’s case has been a slow-moving one as she has had 5 protection attorneys connected to her case, together with two appointed to characterize her after her final retained lawyer, Christopher Malcolm, was suspended from working towards regulation in Massachusetts.
Every new lawyer units the trial date again as they need to course of a boatload of data. Former Cannon-Grant lawyer Keith Halpern wrote that he “believes that substantially more discovery has been produced in Ms. Cannon-Grant’s case than in the entire MS-13 case.”
Her present attorneys, George Vien and Emma Notis-McConarty, retrieved the case file from Malcolm on June 17, in keeping with courtroom data. U.S. District Courtroom Choose Angel Kelley set a jury trial begin date of Oct. 14 after which each side filed a flurry of motions relating to limitations to witnesses within the trial.
Then got here the submitting that Cannon-Grant intends to alter her plea.
The Herald has reached out to Vien and Notis-McConarty for remark.
Accusations towards Cannon-Grant allege she paid herself a hefty wage from the charity’s coffers, in direct distinction to public statements that she took no wage.
She’s additionally accused of directing co-conspirators to use for private and non-private grants for the group that truly went towards the couple’s residing bills. Feds say a $10,400 grant from an unnamed division retailer for use to feed hungry kids however was really laundered by means of a church to pay again hire.
She’s additionally accused of utilizing up a $6,000 grant from the Suffolk District Legal professional’s workplace when it was nonetheless beneath the management of Rachael Rollins, who was compelled to stop her U.S. Legal professional’s job in Boston.
Cannon-Grant was fired from ViB by its board of administrators in 2022, and the charity was shuttered.
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