Carmine Agnello, grandson of the late 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. According to the Department of Justice, Agnello used at least half of the funds to invest in cryptocurrency ventures. The US Attorney's Eastern District of New York office stated that Agnello submitted false information to secure multiple disaster relief loans, claiming the funds were for his autoparts and recycling business in Queens.
Instead, he diverted the proceeds for personal use, including investing approximately $420,000 in a cryptocurrency business. Agnello will begin his prison sentence on July 1. The case is one of several instances of individuals defrauding the government's Covid relief fund, with statistics from the US Government Accountability Office indicating that up to 15% of the total funds were lost to scams. Agnello's grandfather, John Gotti, was a notorious mob boss who exerted power through violence and was eventually sentenced to federal prison, where he died of cancer in 1992.