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 at least half of the proceeds used to invest in cryptocurrency businesses, according to the Department of Justice. In a statement, 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, using the funds for personal gain, including a $420,000 investment in a cryptocurrency business. The scheme, which involved submitting false information to the SBA between April 2020 and November 2021, claimed the funds were for employee salaries and business operations at his autoparts and recycling company in Queens.
'During the height of the pandemic, the defendant shamelessly diverted government and taxpayer funds for his own use, which he must now repay,' said US Attorney Joseph Nocella. The case is not an isolated incident, with numerous individuals having been found guilty of defrauding the government's Covid relief fund, including Bruce Choi, who obtained $2 million in pandemic-related business loans to buy cryptocurrency, and David T.
Hines, who used $3.9 million in relief funds to purchase a Lamborghini. According to the US Government Accountability Office, an estimated $135 billion, or up to 15% of the total Covid relief funds, was lost to scams. Agnello's grandfather, John Gotti, was a notorious figure who headed the Gambino crime family, earning an estimated $500 million annually from various illicit activities, including union extortion, illegal gambling, loan-sharking, and stock fraud, before being convicted on 13 criminal counts in 1992 and dying in federal prison at the age of 61.