CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — Late mob boss John Gotti’s reality-TV-star grandson was sentenced Monday to 15 months in prison for pocketing $1.1 million in loans from a federal program meant to help small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Carmine Agnello, whose gel-spiked hair was a mainstay of the mid-2000s A&E series “Growing Up Gotti,” must pay the money back and perform 100 hours of community service, Judge Nusrat Choudhury said in federal court on Long Island.
Agnello’s sentencing was rescheduled last month after he said he planned to donate a kidney to his mother, Victoria Gotti, the daughter of the late Gambino crime family boss. Agnello sought to avoid prison as a reward for the donation, which has not happened.
Agnello, 40, must also receive mental health treatment for issues including gambling addiction, Choudhury said. He will begin his sentence on July 20 and will remain under court supervision for two years after he leaves prison, Choudhury said.
Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 33 to 41 months.
“I carry a great deal of guilt and shame for my actions,” Agnello told the judge, calling the scheme “wrong, selfish and criminal.”
Agnello pleaded guilty in September 2024 to a single count of wire fraud after federal prosecutors said he fraudulently applied for, and received, at least three loans under the Small Business Administration’s COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program between April 2020 and November 2021.
Agnello obtained the loans on behalf of his company, Crown Auto Parts & Recycling LLC, but used the funds for other purposes, including a $420,000 investment in a cryptocurrency business, prosecutors said. The company ceased operations before Agnello applied for and received the bulk of the loan funds, prosecutors said.
Agnello lied on his loan applications that he did not have a criminal record and included false information about the number of people his business employed and his intended use for the funds, prosecutors said.
“During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the defendant shamefully lined his own pockets with government and taxpayers’ dollars,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said.
After starring as a teenage with his mother and two brothers on “Growing Up Gotti,” Agnello dropped out of college, co-owned several junkyards with his brothers and runs an online automotive parts retailer. Before the loan case, he was twice convicted of crimes: disorderly conduct in 2009 for possessing a banned gravity knife and a misdemeanor in 2018 for operating an unregistered salvage operation.
Seeking probation instead of prison, Agnello’s lawyer wrote in a sentencing memo last month that the Gotti grandson “resisted being defined by the show, and has strived to make his own stamp” including through his interests in body building, music and cars.
“Despite growing up in one of America’s most scrutinized families, Carmine exhibited the importance of creativity, reinventing oneself, and always personal growth,” lawyer Steven Metcalf wrote. “His journey is far more uplifting than the one found with a quick google search, where the headlines naturally suggest something scandalous.”
