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 it in cryptocurrency businesses, according to the Department of Justice. Agnello submitted false information to secure multiple disaster relief loans, claiming the funds were for his autoparts and recycling business in Queens, including employee salaries. Instead, he used around $420,000 of the proceeds to invest in a cryptocurrency business. The US Attorney's Eastern District of New York office stated that Agnello 'diverted [the proceeds] for his personal use, including by investing approximately $420,000 in a cryptocurrency business.' Agnello's actions were deemed shameful by United States Attorney Joseph Nocella, who noted that 'during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the defendant shamefully lined his own pockets with government and taxpayers’ dollars, which he must repay as part of today’s sentence.' The case is part of a larger issue of Covid-19 relief fund fraud, with statistics from the US Government Accountability Office indicating that roughly $135 billion, or 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 ventures, including extortion, illegal gambling, loan-sharking, and stock fraud, before being sentenced to federal prison in 1992.