Carmine Agnello, the grandson of infamous mob boss John Gotti, has been sentenced to 15 months in prison for his role in a $1.1 million COVID-19 relief fund scam, with a significant portion of the funds invested in cryptocurrency ventures, according to the Department of Justice. In a statement released on Monday, the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York revealed that Agnello had secured multiple disaster relief loans from the Small Business Administration by submitting false information between April 2020 and November 2021. The loans were purportedly for his autoparts and recycling business in Queens, including employee salaries.
However, Agnello diverted approximately $420,000 of the proceeds to invest in a cryptocurrency business. The US Attorney, Joseph Nocella, condemned Agnello's actions, stating that he had 'shamefully lined his own pockets with government and taxpayers' dollars' during the pandemic. Agnello is scheduled to begin his prison sentence on July 1. This case is not an isolated incident, as numerous individuals have been found guilty of defrauding the government's COVID relief funds, including Bruce Choi, who obtained $2 million in pandemic-related business loans for non-existent companies to buy cryptocurrency, and David T.
Hines, who fraudulently obtained $3.9 million and used some of the funds to purchase a Lamborghini. According to statistics from the US Government Accountability Office, an estimated $135 billion, or up to 15% of the total COVID relief funds, was lost to scams. John Gotti, Agnello's grandfather, was a notorious figure who exerted power through brutal violence and amassed significant wealth from various illicit ventures, including extortion, illegal gambling, loan-sharking, and stock fraud, before being convicted and sentenced to federal prison, where he died of cancer at the age of 61.