The grandson of one of the most infamous crime figures in the U.S. ended up getting sentenced after he snagged pandemic relief money and funneled it into crypto. An expert says this highlights how some folks were taking advantage of the loopholes in the Covid aid programs.

Carmine G. Agnello, grandson of John Gotti, the former boss of the Gambino family, got slapped with 15 months in the slammer. He scammed the small business relief program, the EIDL, pocketing around $1.1 million.

But instead of using the money to run his business, he diverted over $400,000 to play around with crypto. His company was based in Queens, New York, and he even applied for several loans providing false information, like employee numbers and what he was going to use the money for.

He confessed to the crime in 2024 and, besides prison time, he's got to pay back over $1.2 million, serve two years under monitoring, and do community service.

Now, according to the folks who know their stuff, all this happened because, during the pandemic, the government wanted to release money too quickly, without looking closely. You know how that goes, right? It became easy for those looking to play smart.

And this story wasn't an isolated case, you know. There was a lot of fraud in those aid programs, like billions of dollars. And with the crypto market booming back then, it became an easy route for this kind of scam.

Even being the grandson of a heavy hitter in the mob, in this case, the Justice treated it more like ordinary fraud, not directly linked to organized crime. Still, it shows how some people took advantage of the pandemic situation to do wrong, you know. $BTC ,$ETH ,$XRP