New York
Gotti Grandson Is Sentenced to 15 Months for Covid Relief Fraud
The grandson of an infamous mob boss was sentenced to prison on Monday after pleading guilty to defrauding the federal government out of more than $1 million in Covid relief funds, some of which he invested in cryptocurrency.
Carmine G. Agnello Jr., the grandson of John J. Gotti, the former leader of the Gambino crime family, was sentenced to 15 months in prison by Judge Nusrat J. Choudhury in Federal District Court in Central Islip, N.Y. She also ordered Mr. Agnello to pay $1.3 million in restitution to the Small Business Administration.
Mr. Agnello, 39, fidgeted in court on Monday. Some of his family members were in attendance, including mob figures previously convicted of federal crimes: his father Carmine (the Bull) Agnello and his uncle John A. Gotti.
Wearing a gray, checkered suit, Mr. Agnello read a brief statement in court calling his crime “wrong, selfish and criminal.” He added that he never wanted to “find myself in prison” like so many of his relatives.
“I regret not only what I did, but the disappointment I caused my family,” he said.
Starting in April 2020, Mr. Agnello applied for at least three loans for his Queens-based company, Crown Auto Parts & Recycling L.L.C., through a program meant to support small businesses hurt by the pandemic.
He applied for the loans under false pretenses, claiming he did not have a criminal record when he in fact did have one, prosecutors said. He then used more than $400,000 of the borrowed money to invest in a crypto business.
Mr. Agnello pleaded guilty in September 2024 to a single count of wire fraud. Federal prosecutors with the Eastern District of New York had sought a sentence of around three years, as well as $1.3 million in restitution.
He “shamefully lined his own pockets with government and taxpayers’ dollars,” Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
As a child, Mr. Agnello starred on the reality television show “Growing Up Gotti” alongside his mother, Victoria Gotti, and two brothers, Frank and John. The show, which ran on A&E for three seasons and was canceled in 2005, depicted a Long Island household in the milieu of “The Sopranos.”
At the time, Mr. Agnello’s father was in prison and had been divorced from Ms. Gotti, a former columnist for The New York Post, leaving her to raise three rowdy sons. The intense media focus on the Gottis gave the grandson “a distorted sense of reality,” wrote John A. Gotti, Mr. Agnello’s uncle and the leader of the crime family in the 1990s, in a letter to Judge Choudhury before the sentencing.
“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,” Mr. Gotti wrote. He added that his nephew faced pressure “to live up to the Gotti name.”
Mr. Agnello found his way into the family business, in a way. In 2018, he pleaded guilty to running an unregistered scrap business. That case echoed his father’s racketeering conviction after he firebombed a rival scrap company in Queens that was run by undercover police officers.
Mr. Agnello’s grandfather exercised power with unrelenting brutality and delighted in the spotlight. He seized control of the family by organizing the 1985 assassination of his predecessor, Paul Castellano, before running enterprises that investigators estimated earned about $500 million a year from ventures that included extorting unions, illegal gambling, loan-sharking and stock fraud.
After numerous acquittals in state and federal trials, aided by juries that had been tampered with, Mr. Gotti earned the nickname “Teflon Don” from New York City’s tabloids. He was ultimately convicted in 1992 on 13 criminal counts and died of cancer in 2002 at age 61 in a federal prison hospital.
Jeffrey Lichtman, a lawyer for Mr. Agnello, told Judge Choudhury that Mr. Agnello had grown up with no male role models in his life, as 15 of his family members had gone to prison, including his grandfather when he was 5 and his father when he was 14.
Mr. Lichtman, who also represented Mr. Agnello’s uncle, called his client’s crime “horrific behavior” but added that his conduct was inevitable.
Charles P. Kelly, a federal prosecutor, said in court on Monday that Mr. Agnello’s family history was no excuse for his fraud.
“This case is not about John Gotti; it’s about Carmine Agnello,” Mr. Kelly said.
This year, Steven Metcalf, another lawyer for Mr. Agnello, asked Judge Choudhury for a sentence with no prison time so that Mr. Agnello could donate a kidney to his mother, who has renal disease and also appeared in court on Monday. Without the transplant, Ms. Gotti could die during her son’s prison term, Mr. Metcalf said.
But in April, Mr. Agnello hired Mr. Lichtman, who apologized to the judge for Mr. Metcalf’s “voluminous argument” in support of Mr. Agnello, which stretched hundreds of pages.
As Judge Choudhury announced the sentence, Mr. Agnello kept his gaze forward and nodded. Judge Choudhury pushed back on the notion that his upbringing drove him to commit wire fraud.
“You were raised with access to opportunities. These are opportunities that many people in our society do not have,” she said.
After the sentence on Monday, Mr. Agnello embraced his family members in a hallway of the courthouse, one by one, kissing his uncle and his father on the cheek. He must surrender to the authorities to begin serving his prison term by July 20.
Outside the courthouse, his uncle John A. Gotti addressed a group of reporters.
“We had 15 members of our family who went to prison,” he said. “I think that’s enough. I think we did our time.”
new video loaded: Historic Brooklyn Church Destroyed in Fire
By Meg Felling
June 22, 2026
How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
Maruf Abubakari Sadick left Ghana for New York in April 2023, confident he was prepared for chilly weather.
When he arrived that morning, the temperatures were in the 50s. He might as well have arrived during a snowstorm.
“‘It’s really cold,’” he told his brother, who laughed and reminded him it wasn’t even winter. His brother brought him a warm jacket, sparking a love affair with outerwear, as well as clothes and colognes.
Three years later, these are the little luxuries on which Mr. Sadick splurges when he is not working two jobs as a security officer in the city.
“I really like to look good, and I like to smell good,” Mr. Sadick, 37, said. “I just tell myself ‘I work too hard. It’s self care.’”
Together, his security jobs bring in close to $46,000 a year, which pays for rent, remittances to his family in Ghana, Wi-Fi, his phone bill and groceries. At the end of the month, he squirrels away what he can so he can one day pay for nursing school.
His rent is $700 a month, which affords him a room in a four-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in the East Bronx that he shares with two other men and one woman.
“Funny enough, we don’t have a schedule for the bathroom,” Mr. Sadick said. “It’s not easy.”
He buys a 30-pound bag of rice for $30 from the nearby bodega that lasts him about three months and a 40-pack of Poland Spring water for $20 so he can bring a bottle to work.
The housemates often share food, usually fish stews and okra soups that Mr. Sadick pours into a thermos, along with the rice, which he then takes to work. It helps him avoid paying for takeout which can cost more than $20.
Mr. Sadick said he learned quickly that to survive in New York, you need to share.
Two Jobs, Little Sleep
Mr. Sadick makes $17 an hour at both jobs, earning the current minimum wage in the city. By next year, he could be making at least $22.20 an hour, with two weeks of paid vacation and paid holidays.
The bump in pay is part of the Aland Etienne Safety and Security Act, a city law that Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed shortly after he took office that set a minimum wage for security guards. The law, which also requires employers to contribute to paid time off and health benefits, was named after the security officer who was fatally shot in July 2025 at 345 Park Avenue by a gunman who killed three others before killing himself.
Mr. Sadick did not know Mr. Etienne, but he said his death terrified him and other security officers, who realized how vulnerable they were at work.
The job “seems easy,” he said. “It seems quiet. Then, one moment, it’s all chaos.”
From Tuesday to Friday he works a four to eight-hour shift when he guards a sprawling office complex in Long Island City, Queens.
On weekends, he guards a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in East Harlem from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. When his shift ends, he takes the subway for a 40-minute commute back to the office complex in Queens, where he works 12-hour overnight shifts on Saturday and Sunday.
Three days a week he takes GED classes in the morning, which are free to state residents. Mondays are his one day off, which he uses “to make up for the two days that I don’t sleep,” Mr. Sadick said.
During the summers, when school is not in session, he tries to make some money selling bus tours to tourists around Times Square. On a good day, he will make $250 to $500 in commissions. On bad days, he will spend five hours in the heat with nothing to show for it.
He said he was exhausted, but driven to pursue a career in medicine.
“I like to take care of people,” he said.
Sending Help Home
A big part of Mr. Sadick’s salary goes to his family in Ghana. On average, he will send $500 a month to help pay for his parents’ food, his grandmother’s health aide and his sister’s schooling.
Last month, he sent a $1,200 so that his parents could buy two sheep. He sent the money through Taptap Send, an app that lets people send money to countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America.
The sheep should provide enough meat to last them a couple of months, he said. His brother sent over $2,000 around the same time so that their extended family could buy a bull.
Sending money home is “expected,” Mr. Sadick said, adding that he feels “very good” about being able to help.
“We are brought up in a system where it’s all about family,” he said. “You are brought up to provide.”
Self-Care Is Worth the Splurge
When Mr. Sadick has extra money in his pocket, he will pop into Zara or Macy’s, where he shops for shoes, jackets and button-down shirts.
He has six bottles of cologne. His favorites are Al Rehab Lord Eau De Parfum and Mountain Woody Forest from Zara. The Al Rehab cologne, which sells for $10.95 an ounce on Amazon, is for daytime. He saves the Mountain Woody Forest — $74.99 on Amazon — for special occasions.
He owns 18 pairs of shoes, including red and white Air Jordans that he bought for $200 and a pair of brown, suede boots from Zara that cost $100.
“These are my favorites,” he said, stroking the soft Zara boots. “I look a bit professional in them.”
He is still trying to figure out what he will do when his salary goes up.
Most likely, he said he would keep working both jobs so that he could save more money. But he daydreams about quitting one of them.
It would be nice, Mr. Sadick said, to get more sleep, have time to play soccer and visit art museums.
What he would really like is more time to take long walks.
One of his favorite places to walk is Dumbo, where he worked briefly guarding a construction site and fell in love with the sweeping views of Manhattan and the cool breeze that comes off the water.
A place in Dumbo, he said, would be the ultimate indulgence.
“That would be a dream come true,” Mr. Sadick said. “It’s so nice there.”
We are talking to New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save.
new video loaded: Fans Show Up to the Parade in Their Best Knicks-Themed Attire
transcript
transcript
Fans Show Up to the Parade in Their Best Knicks-Themed Attire
New York Knicks fans showed up in droves to a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan in their best orange and blue outfits to honor the N.B.A champions.
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“Patrick Ewing. He didn’t get a ring. But I wear your sneakers, bro. When I was in high school, back in the ’90s, Patrick Ewing, John Starks, they were the team that I rooted for in the ’90s. They didn’t make it. So as a tribute to him because this is where I started at being a fan, Patrick Ewing. Knicks hat in denim — I’m a denim fanatic. So I love denim — Knicks hat. And yeah, that’s it.” “This is my style. I usually dress like this every day. But I did a special Knicks edition. It’s all really fun. I start with my makeup. I did really cute flames on my eyes because the Knicks are fire. I don’t really know what I’m going to do before I put it on. I just figure it out along the way. Like, this is a piece of fabric and I just layer in stuff.” “This is from my online boutique and the hat I just bought on the way to the parade because I wanted to match the jumpsuit, and that’s how I came up with the outfit.” “She was ready to go, man.” “Can you show your fingernail?” “She’s been sleeping in her Jalen Brunson jersey for the last 10 weeks. We’ve been watching all the games. You want to tell them who’s your favorite player?” “Jalen Brunson.” “I’m pretty sure this jersey was actually made for a human baby. But they’re selling them around the block. And we threw it on Chester and everyone started clapping. So — he wears it well.” “Blue and orange.” “So I did blue and orange.” “It had to be orange and blue. “Orange and blue. Orange and blue.”
By Meg Felling, Jeremy Raff, Ang Li and David Cheung
June 18, 2026
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