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, with at least half of the funds being invested in cryptocurrency ventures, according to the Department of Justice. The US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York announced that Agnello had submitted false information to secure multiple disaster relief loans, which he then used for personal gain, including investing approximately $420,000 in a cryptocurrency business. Agnello will begin his prison sentence on July 1, and as part of his sentence, he will be required to repay the funds he fraudulently obtained. The case is part of a larger pattern of Covid-19 relief fund fraud, with statistics from the US Government Accountability Office suggesting that up to 15% of the total funds, approximately $135 billion, were lost to scams.
Agnello's grandfather, John Gotti, was a notorious figure in organized crime, with a reputation for brutal violence and a lucrative empire that included extortion, illegal gambling, and stock fraud, generating an estimated $500 million annually. He was found guilty on 13 criminal counts in 1992 and died in federal prison in 2002.