Carmine Agnello, the grandson of notorious mob boss John Gotti, has been sentenced to 15 months in prison for his role in defrauding the US government's Covid relief funding system out of $1.1 million, with the proceeds partly used to invest in cryptocurrency. According to the Department of Justice, Agnello fraudulently obtained multiple disaster relief loans from the Small Business Administration and diverted the funds for personal use, including investing approximately $420,000 in a cryptocurrency business. The scheme involved submitting false information to the SBA between April 2020 and November 2021, claiming the funds were for his autoparts and recycling business in Queens.
The US Attorney's Eastern District of New York office stated that Agnello's actions were a shameful exploitation of government and taxpayer funds during the pandemic. This case is not isolated, as numerous individuals have been convicted of defrauding the government's Covid relief fund, with statistics from the US Government Accountability Office indicating that up to 15% of the total funds were lost to scams. Agnello's grandfather, John Gotti, was a powerful figure in organized crime, earning an estimated $500 million annually from various illicit ventures before his conviction and imprisonment in 1992.