Carmine Agnello, the grandson of notorious mob boss John Gotti, has received a 15-month prison sentence for his role in defrauding the US government's Covid-19 relief funding system of $1.1 million, which he then used to invest in cryptocurrency, according to the Department of Justice. The US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York announced that Agnello had obtained multiple disaster relief loans from the Small Business Administration under false pretenses and diverted the funds for personal use, including investing approximately $420,000 in a cryptocurrency business. Between April 2020 and November 2021, Agnello submitted false information to the SBA, claiming the loan proceeds were intended for his autoparts and recycling business in Queens, including employee salaries.
US Attorney Joseph Nocella stated, '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 caught defrauding the government's Covid relief fund, including Bruce Choi, who obtained $2 million in pandemic-related business loans for non-existent companies and used the money to buy cryptocurrency, and David T. Hines, who fraudulently obtained $3.9 million and used some of the proceeds to purchase a Lamborghini. According to the US Government Accountability Office, an estimated $135 billion, or up to 15% of the total Covid-19 relief funds, was lost to scams.
Agnello's grandfather, John Gotti, was a powerful figure in organized crime, earning an estimated $500 million annually from various ventures, including extortion, illegal gambling, loan-sharking, and stock fraud, before being sentenced to federal prison in 1992, where he died of cancer at the age of 61.