Jeffrey Grant | |
---|---|
Occupation | Lawyer |
Years active | 1981 – |
Website | https://grantlaw.com/ |
Jeffrey (Jeff) D. Grant, Esq. is an American lawyer and minister who went to prison for loan fraud. After prison, he co-founded Progressive Prison Ministries and the White Collar Support Group, a support group serving those navigating the white-collar criminal justice system and their families. [1]
Grant attended SUNY Brockport, graduating with a B.S. in Business and Economics in 1978. He attended law school at New York Law School, graduating in 1981. [2]
Grant practiced law in New York City and then Westchester County, NY. [3] During a 10-year addiction to prescription opioids, in 2001 Grant made false statements on a Small Business Administration EIDL loan application and was later convicted for loan fraud. [4] Grant was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. Grant was incarcerated at United States Penitentiary, Allenwood. [5]
After serving time in federal prison (2006 – 2007), Grant earned a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, focusing on Christian social ethics. [6] After graduating in 2012, Grant served at the First Baptist Church of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, CT as Associate Minister and Director of Prison Ministries. [7]
In 2013, Grant, along with his wife Lynn Springer, co-founded Progressive Prison Ministries, Inc., a 503(c)(3) devoted to white-collar criminals navigating the justice system and their families. [8] The non-profit hosts a weekly White Collar Support Group meeting and in 2024 hosted its first White Collar Conference. [9]
On May 5, 2021, Grant's law license was reinstated by the Supreme Court of the State of New York. Grant is a member of the American Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, the New York City Bar Association, the Federal Bar Association, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Grant has served on criminal justice-related boards such as the Legal Action Center (New York, NY), Family ReEntry, and Community Partners in Action (formerly the Connecticut Prison Association, Hartford, CT). [10] [11] [12] From 2016 – 2019, Grant served as executive director of Family ReEntry, Inc. (Bridgeport, CT), a Connecticut criminal justice organization. [13]
Grant has appeared in various media such as Entrepreneur , [14] Bloomberg Law , [15] Forbes , [16] Vanity Fair , [17] New York Magazine, [18] and the Rich Roll Podcast [19] as a source on topics including addiction, COVID-19-era Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)/SBA loan fraud, [20] [21] funding for post-incarceration social services, [22] reentry, [23] [24] and how white-collar criminals can navigate living in and after prison. [25]
Grant wrote a chapter in the book Suicide and Its Impact on the Criminal Justice System (2021), [26] published by the American Bar Association. He was featured in the books Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury by Evan Osnos [27] and Trusted White Collar Offenders: Global Case Studies of Crime Convenience, [28] published by academic publisher Springer International.
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term crime does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition, though statutory definitions have been provided for certain purposes. The most popular view is that crime is a category created by law; in other words, something is a crime if declared as such by the relevant and applicable law. One proposed definition is that a crime or offence is an act harmful not only to some individual but also to a community, society, or the state. Such acts are forbidden and punishable by law.
Mark Edward Whitacre is an American business executive who came to public attention in 1995 when, as president of the Decatur, Illinois-based BioProducts Division at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), he became the highest-level corporate executive in U.S. history to become a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) whistleblower. For three years (1992–95), Whitacre acted as a cooperating witness for the FBI, which was investigating ADM for price fixing. In the late 1990s, Whitacre was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for embezzling $9.5 million from ADM at the same time he was assisting the federal price-fixing investigation.
The term "white-collar crime" refers to financially motivated, nonviolent or non-directly violent crime committed by individuals, businesses and government professionals. The crimes are believed to be committed by middle- or upper-class individuals for financial gains. It was first defined by the sociologist Edwin Sutherland in 1939 as "a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of their occupation". Typical white-collar crimes could include wage theft, fraud, bribery, Ponzi schemes, insider trading, labor racketeering, embezzlement, cybercrime, copyright infringement, money laundering, identity theft, and forgery. White-collar crime overlaps with corporate crime.
Prison Fellowship is the world's largest Christian nonprofit organization for prisoners, former prisoners, and their families, and a leading advocate for justice reform.
Susan Carol McDougal is a real estate investor who served prison time as a result of the Whitewater controversy.
Skinner v. State of Oklahoma, ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535 (1942), is a unanimous United States Supreme Court ruling that held that laws permitting the compulsory sterilization of criminals are unconstitutional as it violates a person's rights given under the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, specifically the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause. The relevant Oklahoma law applied to "habitual criminals" but excluded white-collar crimes from carrying sterilization penalties.
Incarceration in the United States is one of the primary means of punishment for crime in the United States. In 2021, over five million people were under supervision by the criminal justice system, with nearly two million people incarcerated in state or federal prisons and local jails. The United States has the largest known prison population in the world. It has 5% of the world’s population while having 20% of the world’s incarcerated persons. China, with more than four times more inhabitants, has fewer persons in prison. Prison populations grew dramatically beginning in the 1970s, but began a decline around 2009, dropping 25% by year-end 2021.
Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have experienced negative consequences of that behavior, or have been trained to extinguish it. Recidivism is also used to refer to the percentage of former prisoners who are rearrested for a similar offense.
Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin is an American businessman and convicted fraudster who was the CEO of Agriprocessors, a now-bankrupt kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, formerly owned by his father, Aaron Rubashkin. During his time as CEO of the plant, Agriprocessors grew into one of the nation's largest kosher meat producers, but was also cited for issues involving animal cruelty, food safety, environmental safety, child labor, and hiring undocumented immigrants.
The redemption movement is an element of the pseudolaw movement, mainly active in the United States and Canada, that promotes fraudulent debt and tax payment schemes. The movement is also called redemptionism. Redemption promoters allege that a secret fund is created for every citizen at birth and that a procedure exists to "redeem" or reclaim this fund to pay bills. Common redemption schemes include acceptance for value (A4V), Treasury Direct Accounts (TDA) and secured party creditor "kits," collections of pseudolegal tactics sold to participants despite a complete lack of any actual legal basis. Such tactics are sometimes called "money for nothing" schemes, as they propose to extract money from the government by using secret methods. The name of the A4V scheme in particular has become synonymous with the movement as a whole.
The Federal Correctional Complex, Allenwood is a federal prison complex for male inmates in Pennsylvania, United States. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice.
Joyce Alene Vance is an American lawyer who served as the United States attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017. She was one of the first five U.S. attorneys, and the first female U.S. attorney, nominated by President Barack Obama.
Criminal justice reform seeks to address structural issues in criminal justice systems such as racial profiling, police brutality, overcriminalization, mass incarceration, and recidivism. Reforms can take place at any point where the criminal justice system intervenes in citizens’ lives, including lawmaking, policing, sentencing and incarceration. Criminal justice reform can also address the collateral consequences of conviction, including disenfranchisement or lack of access to housing or employment, that may restrict the rights of individuals with criminal records.
Heather Ann Thompson is an American historian, author, activist, professor, and speaker from Detroit, Michigan. Thompson won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for History, the 2016 Bancroft Prize, and five other awards for her work Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. This book was also a finalist for the Cundill Prize in History as well as the National Book Award and the LA Times Book Award. She is the recipient of several social justice awards as well, including the Life-Long Dedication to Social Justice Award. Alliance of Families for Justice and the Regents Distinguished Award for Public Service.She was awarded the Pitt Professorship of American History and Diplomacy in 2019-2020 and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2022. Thompson was also named a distinguished lecturer by the Organization of American Historians.
Andrew S. Boutros is an American lawyer, law professor, and former federal prosecutor best known for prosecuting corporate fraud and cybercrime cases. In 2015, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association honored him with the National Prosecutorial Award, and he was also elected to the American Law Institute the same year. He is the Regional Chair of Dechert LLP's White Collar practice, where he is resident in the firm's Chicago and DC offices.
Criminal justice reform seeks to address structural issues in criminal justice systems such as racial profiling, police brutality, overcriminalization, mass incarceration, and recidivism. Criminal justice reform can take place at any point where the criminal justice system intervenes in citizens’ lives, including lawmaking, policing, and sentencing.
Craig Carpenito is an American lawyer who served as the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey. On January 5, 2018, Carpenito was appointed U.S. Attorney pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 546 by US Attorney General Jeff Sessions. On April 27, 2018, the judges of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey unanimously appointed Carpenito U.S. Attorney pursuant to their statutory powers. He resigned on January 5, 2021. He previously served as a federal prosecutor in the office from 2003 to 2008.
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is a $953-billion business loan program established by the United States federal government during the Trump administration in 2020 through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act to help certain businesses, self-employed workers, sole proprietors, certain nonprofit organizations, and tribal businesses continue paying their workers.
Decarceration in the United States involves government policies and community campaigns aimed at reducing the number of people held in custody or custodial supervision. Decarceration, the opposite of incarceration, also entails reducing the rate of imprisonment at the federal, state and municipal level. As of 2019, the US was home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. possessed the world's highest incarceration rate: 655 inmates for every 100,000 people, enough inmates to equal the populations of Philadelphia or Houston. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinvigorated the discussion surrounding decarceration as the spread of the virus poses a threat to the health of those incarcerated in prisons and detention centers where the ability to properly socially distance is limited. As a result of the push for decarceration in the wake of the pandemic, as of 2022, the incarceration rate in the United States declined to 505 per 100,000, resulting in the United States no longer having the highest incarceration rate in the world, but still remaining in the top five.
Gregory Joshua Blotnick is an American hedge fund manager and author. He is the founder and portfolio manager of Brattle Street Capital, a long/short equity hedge fund based in New York. In 2021, he pled guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges associated with claiming Paycheck Protection Program loans.
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