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 and invested approximately half of it in cryptocurrency businesses, according to the Department of Justice. The US Attorney's Eastern District of New York office revealed 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 used the money for personal gain, including investing around $420,000 in a cryptocurrency business. Agnello will begin his prison sentence on July 1 and has been ordered to repay the funds as part of his sentence.
This case is not an isolated incident, as numerous individuals have been found guilty of defrauding the government's Covid relief fund, with statistics from the US Government Accountability Office suggesting that up to 15% of the total funds were lost to scams, totaling roughly $135 billion. John Gotti, Agnello's grandfather, was a powerful figure in the Gambino crime family, with estimated annual earnings of $500 million from various illicit ventures, including extortion, illegal gambling, loan-sharking, and stock fraud. He was convicted on 13 criminal counts in 1992 and died in federal prison at the age of 61.