Victoria Gotti’s Son Tried to Delay Reporting to Prison by Offering to Donate His Kidney

On September 26, 2024, John Gotti’s grandson, Carmine Agnello, pleaded guilty to wire fraud, admitting in a New York federal court to fraudulently obtaining $1.1 million in COVID loans and spending some of it on cryptocurrency.

Prosecutors said that between April 2020 and November 2021, Agnello, 40 at the time of his sentencing, applied for and received at least three loans through a national disaster relief loan program on behalf of his New York City-based company, Crown Auto Parts & Recycling, LLC. Agnello not only misrepresented the number of employees he had, but he also used the money to invest in a cryptocurrency business.

Prosecutors sought a 33- to 41-month sentence, with U.S. Attorney Breon S. Peace accusing Agnello of “shamefully” using the pandemic to “line his pockets.” Despite this, U.S. District Judge Nusrat J. Choudhury ordered Agnello to serve 15 months in federal prison.

Defense attorney Steven Metcalf initially had Agnello’s sentencing pushed back from March 13, 2026, to April 20, 2026. At the time, Agnello’s legal team said he would donate a kidney to his mother, Victoria Gotti. Metcalf said in a court filing that Victoria could die or be permanently disabled if she didn’t get a new kidney. However, in a court filing days before the April 20 sentencing, his new lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, apologized to U.S. District Judge Nusrat Choudhury for what he deemed a “voluminous argument” submitted by Agnello’s previous legal team.

Agnello had his voluntary surrender delayed on two occasions as a result of the supposed kidney donation, but it didn’t ultimately keep him out of prison.

Agnello is the grandson of John Gotti, the flamboyant mob boss who led the Gambino crime family, one of New York’s infamous Five Families. John took the helm shortly after arranging the murder of his predecessor, Paul Castellano, and Castellano’s second-in-command, Thomas Bilotti, in 1985. In 1992, John was sentenced to life in prison without parole for a racketeering case that included charges related to the two assassinations.

“John Gotti had the nickname the Dapper Don and later Teflon Don for his seeming ability to escape prosecutions,” Zach Jensen, historian and content development manager at The Mob Museum in Las Vegas, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “By the time he actually went to prison, that was the third major trial he was involved in.”

John died of throat cancer in 2002 while serving his life sentence. The Gottis’ connection to crime is storied, but authorities never linked Agnello’s actions to his late grandfather’s notorious crime syndicate, or to any organized crime.

“There’s a clear distinction between organized crime and regular crime,” Jensen says. “It's unfair to paint every Gotti as a member of organized crime when we can pinpoint just four individuals who had major roles in the Gambino crime family.”

New York federal prosecutors said Agnello obtained three loans through the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program between April 2020 and November 2021. The federal program offered low-interest loans to business owners affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Prosecutors stated Agnello submitted false information to the United States Small Business Administration about the number of employees who worked for Crown Auto Parts & Recycling, LLC, and 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,” prosecutors said after Agnello’s sentencing in April 2026.

Federal prosecutors also said Agnello lied about his prior criminal history when applying for these loans. Homeland Security and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service also participated in the investigation.

Judge Choudhury ordered Agnello to pay $1.2 million to the SBA and complete 100 hours of community service. He also ordered Agnello to voluntarily surrender to federal prison, but questions surrounding the planned kidney donation left his exact surrender date up in the air.

“It depends on how cynical you wanna be. A creative person who doesn't wanna go start their sentence, there’s a ton of reasons why they would want to delay the inevitable,” Ryan Sullivan, defense attorney and partner at Erkan & Sullivan in Massachusetts, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “Most of the time when I've seen legitimate requests to delay or stay a sentence, it’s been as a result of a specific need. The Gotti situation is a great example of that…if it were true.”

More than 27,000 kidney transplants were performed in 2025, with 6,500 of them involving living donors, the United Network for Organ Sharing said. The organization noted that at least 90,000 Americans are awaiting a kidney transplant.

“Two big risk factors for kidney disease are high blood pressure and diabetes. When you add other factors like gout or medications, recurrent dehydration episodes, it's usually not sudden. People can have kidney disease for a decade, and that slowly progresses," Raeeda Gheewala, MD, founder and CEO of Sports Nephrology, tells A&E Crime + Investigation.

Victoria was reportedly in her 20s when she was diagnosed with mitral valve prolapse and prescribed blood thinners. Sources told People that her “blood levels” spiked around 2020, before she was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease in summer 2025. A source said Victoria Gotti credited Agnello with “giving her a brand-new life.”

An ideal living donor, Gheewala says, “would be a healthy person who doesn't have high blood pressure or diabetes, whose blood pressure is perfect, who has good cardiovascular health and they're not obese.”

In a mid-April 2026 court filing, Lichtman, Gotti’s lawyer, admitted that, while Victoria “suffers from ‘advanced chronic kidney disease,’ her renal function has not yet deteriorated to the point when surgery is required as the procedure has ‘significant risks and is only performed when absolutely indicated.'”

Agnello’s surrender date was looming when reports surfaced that his mother developed an infection that put the kidney donation on hold. TMZ reported in early August 2026 that Victoria and Agnello were waiting for a surgeon to reschedule the surgery date, but it was unlikely to occur before Agnello’s tentative surrender date.

Gheewala explains that, once somebody inquires about making a kidney donation, they would undergo blood work, a urine test and imaging, like a CAT scan, to ensure there are no structural image problems with their kidney. A match would be cancer- and infection- free and have a blood type that matches that of the recipient.

It’s not been made public what tests Agnello completed in preparation for donating a kidney to his mother. With the transplant still on hold, it also remained unclear whether the court would delay his surrender yet again.

In July 2026, Judge Choudhury pushed back Agnello’s surrender to August 3, 2026, as two doctors had assured her that the kidney donation was scheduled. In a filing on August, 6, 2026, however, she denied Agnello’s third bid to postpone his surrender and offered an ultimatum: Donate his kidney by August 10 or report to prison.

“Because there is no concrete evidence that an organ transplant will be scheduled to take place at any time between today and September 18, 2026, the request for another deferral of Mr. Agnello’s self-surrender is unjustified,” Judge Choudhury wrote in the August 10 order.

Trial lawyer Adam Leasure explains to A&E Crime + Investigation that judges don’t typically offer extensions.

“What happens the majority of the time is a judge will give maybe a couple of days or a week or two at the most, unless there's a compelling reason to extend it farther,” he says. “If the prosecutor agrees, you have a better chance, but the judge really holds all the discretion.”

Since the kidney donation did not happen, Agnello reported to the Federal Correctional Institution, Fairton, in New Jersey on August 10, 2026, to begin serving his 15-month sentence.

While awaiting his surrender to federal prison, Agnello was charged in early June 2026 with choking and slapping his girlfriend. The assault case was pending in court when Agnello married the girlfriend who accused him—two days before he surrendered to prison.

“This is a good example of the benefit that a person who has a substantial amount of privilege has in this system,” Sullivan says. “You don't generally see the person accused of lower-level crime given voluntary surrender as much as you do the people who are affluent, famous and accused or convicted of white-collar crimes.”

Agnello’s release is scheduled for August 23, 2027.