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 relief funding scam, with proceeds used to invest in cryptocurrency, according to the Department of Justice. In a statement, the US Attorney's Eastern District of New York office revealed that Agnello secured multiple disaster relief loans from the Small Business Administration by submitting false information, which he then used for personal gain, including investing approximately $420,000 in a cryptocurrency business. The grandson of the infamous mob boss will begin his prison term on July 1, having pleaded guilty to defrauding the government's Covid relief program between April 2020 and November 2021.
According to US Attorney Joseph Nocella, '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.' Agnello's case is not an isolated incident, as numerous individuals have been convicted of defrauding the government's Covid relief fund, including Bruce Choi, who illegally obtained $2 million in pandemic-related business loans to purchase cryptocurrency, and David T. Hines, who used relief funds to buy a Lamborghini.
Statistics from the US Government Accountability Office reveal that up to 15% of the total Covid relief funds, approximately $135 billion, were lost to scams. Agnello's grandfather, John Gotti, was a powerful figure in organized crime, earning an estimated $500 million annually from illicit activities, including extortion, loan-sharking, and stock fraud, before being sentenced to federal prison, where he died of cancer in 1992.