Carmine Agnello, the grandson of notorious 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 proceeds 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 fraudulently obtained multiple disaster relief loans from the Small Business Administration and diverted the funds for personal use, including a $420,000 investment in a cryptocurrency business.
Between April 2020 and November 2021, Agnello submitted false information to the SBA, claiming the loan proceeds were for his autoparts and recycling business in Queens, including employee salaries. 'During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the defendant shamelessly lined his own pockets with government and taxpayers' dollars, which he must repay as part of today's sentence,' said United States Attorney Joseph Nocella. Agnello's case is not an isolated incident, as numerous individuals have been caught defrauding the government's COVID-19 relief fund, including Bruce Choi, who illegally obtained $2 million in pandemic-related business loans to purchase cryptocurrency, and David T.
Hines, who fraudulently obtained $3.9 million and used some of the proceeds to buy a Lamborghini. According to statistics from the US Government Accountability Office, an estimated $135 billion, or up to 15% of the total COVID-19 relief funds, was lost to scams.
Agnello's grandfather, John Gotti, was a notorious figure who exerted power through brutal violence and amassed a fortune estimated to be around $500 million per year from various illicit ventures, including extortion, illegal gambling, loan-sharking, and stock fraud. In 1992, Gotti was convicted on 13 criminal counts and sentenced to federal prison, where he died of cancer at the age of 61.