John Gotti’s Grandson Sentenced to Prison for $1 Million+ Covid Fraud After Mom’s Pleas Fail to Sway Judge

Screenshot via Long Island News 12.

Carmine G. Agnello Jr., the grandson of infamous mob boss John J. Gotti Jr., was sentenced Monday to fifteen months in prison for fraudulently obtaining Covid relief loans, despite the fervent courtroom pleas from his mother begging the judge for leniency and claiming he intended to donate a kidney to her.

Gotti earned the nickname “the Teflon Don” after prosecutors repeatedly found themselves unable to get juries to find the Gambino crime boss guilty in three trials, later found to be due to Gotti’s jury tampering, witness intimidation, and other schemes. Eventually, after his underboss, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, turned state’s evidence and testified against him, Gotti was convicted in 1992 for five murders, racketeering, conspiracy to murder, loansharking, illegal gambling, obstruction of justice, bribery, and tax evasion. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole and died from cancer in a federal prison in Missouri in 2002.

John Gotti mugshot, Public domain photo via FBI.

The younger Gotti family member’s criminal ambitions are fortunately less bloody, but still will change his residential address to the federal penitentiary system. According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, Agnello, 39, fraudulently obtained funds from the Covid relief loans administered by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and used the money to buy cryptocurrency:

As set forth in court filings and on the record during the defendant’s plea and sentencing hearings, between April 2020 and November 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Agnello fraudulently applied for, and received, at least three EIDLP [COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program] loans totaling approximately $1.1 million, which he submitted on behalf of Crown Auto Parts & Recycling, LLC (Crown), a Jamaica, Queens-based business that he operated. In an effort to receive loans to which he was not entitled, Agnello submitted false information to the SBA about the number of employees who worked for Crown, as well as about the intended use of the loan proceeds. Instead of using the funds for Crown, Agnello diverted them for his personal use, including by investing approximately $420,000 in a cryptocurrency business.

Agnello pleaded guilty to defrauding the federal government and to wire fraud connected to his scheme to obtain the EIDLP funds.

According to TMZ, prosecutors were seeking a harsher sentence of about three years in prison and about $100,000 more in restitution.

The New York Times described how Agnello “fidgeted in court” as he awaited the judge’s ruling, before reading a statement that admitted his actions were “wrong, selfish and criminal” and he had hoped to never “find myself in prison” like many of his family members. “I regret not only what I did, but the disappointment I caused my family,” he added.

Several of Agnello’s infamous relatives were featured in his trial. Father Carmine “The Bull” Agnello and uncle John A. Gotti — both previously convicted of federal crimes for their mob activity — attended his sentencing hearing. Uncle John had previously sent a letter to the court urging leniency for his nephew, arguing that the media attention on the Gotti family had given Agnello “a distorted sense of reality” and high level of pressure to “live up to the Gotti name,” specifically the three seasons of the A&E reality show, Growing Up Gotti, filmed when he was still a child along with his mother Victoria Gotti (John J. Gotti Jr.’s daughter) and two brothers.

“Being part of the Gotti family meant growing up with too much attention, expectations and society’s judgment that most kids never have to deal with,” wrote John Gotti.

Mother Victoria Gotti was also at the sentencing hearing. She had filed a letter with the court saying she had renal failure and her son had offered to donate a kidney to her, pleading with the judge to give a sentence with no prison time so he could recover from the surgery. Last month, she “told TMZ she would forgo the procedure if her son gets jail time … because she’d rather succumb to the disease than have Carmine recover from kidney removal behind bars,” citing her father’s death from cancer in federal prison.

Judge Nusrat J. Choudhury with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, a Biden appointee, was unpersuaded by Agnello’s expressions of remorse or the pleas for leniency from other Gotti family members. She sentenced Agnello to serve fifteen months in federal prison, to pay restitution to the SBA in the amount of $1,268,302, and upon his release, serve two years of supervised release and perform 100 hours of community service.

After the sentencing, Agnello went straight to a waiting car without speaking to reporters, but uncle John A. Gotti offered some remarks, reported Long Island News 12.

“His mother did a fine job raising him. However, the circumstances surrounding it are very difficult,” Gotti said. “Listen, as you guys all know, we’ve had 15 members of our family go to prison. I think it’s enough. I think we did our time.”

Agnello’s sentence is set to start on July 20.

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