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Carmine Agnello — blood of the most feared mob boss in American history — robbed everyday taxpayers during a pandemic. Now he's heading to prison as the 16th member of his family to be jailed.

By Samuel A. López | USA Herald | Long Island Federal Court | Surrenders July 20, 2025

$1.1M+

STOLEN IN COVID LOANS

15mo.

FEDERAL PRISON SENTENCE

#16

GOTTI FAMILY MEMBER JAILED

When the grandson of John Gotti — the "Dapper Don," the most infamous organized crime boss of the 20th century — stands before a federal judge and admits to stealing over a million dollars meant to help struggling small businesses survive a global pandemic, you have to stop and absorb the sheer audacity of that. That's not just a crime. That's a legacy playing itself out in federal court on Long Island, and America was watching.

On Monday, Carmine Agnello, 40, was sentenced by a Long Island federal judge to 15 months in federal prison. He will also serve two years of supervised release when he gets out — and here's the number that should make every hardworking taxpayer's jaw drop: $1,268,302 in restitution owed back to the government. The money he stole. The money that was supposed to keep businesses afloat and workers employed during the darkest chapter of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Wrong, selfish, and criminal."

— CARMINE AGNELLO, IN OPEN COURT, DESCRIBING HIS OWN ACTIONS

You don't often hear a defendant narrate his own downfall so bluntly. But Agnello said it himself, right there in the courtroom. He knew what he was doing. He did it anyway. And now he's paying the price — though his defense attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, was quick to point out that the reality of a 15-month sentence in today's federal system amounts to roughly four to five months of actual prison time. "The actual time spent on a 15-month sentence now is about four or five months, I expect," Lichtman told reporters. Make of that what you will.

HOW THE FRAUD UNFOLDED

Between April 2020 and November 2021 — the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — Agnello fraudulently applied for and received at least three federal loans totaling $1.1 million through his Queens-based business, Crown Auto Parts & Recycling, LLC.

He lied to the Small Business Administration about his number of employees and the intended use of the funds. Instead of keeping workers on payroll — the entire point of the relief program — he diverted the money for personal use, including a staggering $420,000 investment in a cryptocurrency business.

This wasn't a mistake. This wasn't a misunderstanding of the fine print. This was a calculated scheme, executed over nearly two years, designed to extract maximum dollars from a system designed to help the desperate. And who was doing the extracting? A man whose grandfather built an empire on exactly that kind of ruthlessness — except the elder Gotti did it with Gambino crime family muscle, and the younger Agnello did it with a pen and a fraudulent loan application.

THE GOTTI LEGACY

16

MEMBERS OF THE GOTTI FAMILY TO BE JAILED — CARMINE AGNELLO IS THE LATEST

That number — 16 — is not a typo. Sixteen members of the Gotti family have now been sent to prison. At some point, that stops being a coincidence and starts being a pattern. Carmine Agnello joins a lineage of federal convictions that stretches back decades, one that his grandfather's name made famous and his own choices are now extending into the next generation.