Carmine Agnello, the grandson of notorious mob boss John Gotti, has been sentenced to 15 months in prison for his role in a Covid-19 relief fund scam, in which he fraudulently obtained $1.1 million from the US government's Small Business Administration and invested approximately half of the proceeds in cryptocurrency businesses, according to the Department of Justice. The US Attorney's Eastern District of New York office stated that Agnello submitted false information to the SBA between April 2020 and November 2021, claiming the funds were for his autoparts and recycling business in Queens. Instead, he used the money for personal gain, including investing $420,000 in a cryptocurrency business.
Agnello will begin his prison sentence on July 1 and has been ordered to repay the funds as part of his sentence. The case is one of several instances of fraud related to the Covid-19 relief fund, with statistics from the US Government Accountability Office indicating that up to 15% of the total funds, approximately $135 billion, were lost to scams. Agnello's grandfather, John Gotti, was a powerful figure in the Gambino crime family, earning an estimated $500 million annually from various illicit activities, including extortion, illegal gambling, and stock fraud, before his conviction and death in federal prison.