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 partially used to invest in cryptocurrency, according to the Department of Justice. In a statement, the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York revealed that Agnello had fraudulently obtained multiple disaster relief loans from the Small Business Administration and utilized the funds for personal gain, including investing approximately $420,000 in a cryptocurrency business. Agnello will begin his prison term on July 1.
Between April 2020 and November 2021, he submitted false information to the SBA, claiming the funds were for his autoparts and recycling business in Queens, including employee salaries. US Attorney Joseph Nocella stated that Agnello '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, including Bruce Choi, who illegally obtained $2 million in pandemic-related business loans 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 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 convicted and sentenced to federal prison, where he died of cancer at the age of 61.