Charles McGonigal, a former FBI agent who led a counterintelligence division in New York City was sentenced Friday to 28 months in prison in connection with lying to investigators about receiving thousands of dollars from a businessperson tied to the Albanian government. McGonigal was accused of taking $225,000 from a former foreign security officer and businessperson with business interests in foreign countries, Prosecutors recommended 30 months in prison, saying McGonigal “took great pains to abuse the public trust, conceal his conduct, and line his own pockets, multiple times,” NBC News reports. McGonigal pleaded guilty to one count of concealing material facts stemming from the undisclosed payment. That plea came after McGonigal was sentenced to more than four years in prison by a federal judge in New York for conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions by providing information to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
The two prison sentences will run consecutively, for a total of six and a half years. McGonigal was in charge of a counterintelligence and national security issues in New York before his retirement in 2018. He was arrested in January 2023 at John F. Kennedy International Airport. In a statement to the court, McGonigal expressed regret for his actions, which he said “minimized all I have done in honor of my service to the U.S. Government.”
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