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, where he fraudulently obtained $1.1 million from the US government's Small Business Administration and invested approximately half of the funds in cryptocurrency businesses, according to the Department of Justice. In a statement released by the US Attorney's Eastern District of New York office, it was revealed that Agnello submitted false information to secure multiple disaster relief loans, which he then used for personal gain, including investing around $420,000 in a cryptocurrency business. The fraud occurred between April 2020 and November 2021, with Agnello falsely claiming the funds were for his autoparts and recycling business in Queens, including employee salaries. US Attorney Joseph Nocella condemned Agnello's actions, stating that he 'shamefully lined his own pockets with government and taxpayers' dollars' during the pandemic.
Agnello's case is not an isolated incident, as numerous individuals have been caught defrauding the government's Covid relief fund, with statistics from the US Government Accountability Office suggesting that up to 15% of the total funds, roughly $135 billion, were lost to scams. Agnello's grandfather, John Gotti, was a notorious figure who exerted power through brutal violence and amassed a significant fortune through various illicit ventures, including extortion, loan-sharking, and stock fraud, before being convicted and sentenced to federal prison, where he died of cancer at the age of 61.