The ex-mistress of shamed FBI spook Charles McGonigal has branded him a traitorous ‘devil’ who will ‘go to hell when he dies’ after he was sentenced to prison for taking bribes from a sanctioned Russian oligarch.
Allison Guerriero – who may have sparked the investigation into the agent after discovering a bag of cash at their apartment – told DailyMail.com: ‘I cannot wipe the smile off my face knowing that he is going to be incarcerated.’
Married McGonigal, a special agent heading the FBI’s counter-intelligence division in New York, was sentenced to 50 months at Manhattan federal court for using inside knowledge to dig up dirt for notorious industrialist Oleg Deripaska.
At one stage the 55-year-old was even investigating the Russian, who was sanctioned in 2018 over his country’s occupation of Crimea.
Charles McGonigal, 55, was sentenced last week to four years in prison for doing work for sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. He is pictured outside court with his wife on Thursday
Allison Guerriero was the mistress of McGonigal. She tells DailyMail.com that the former FBI agent is a ‘traitor’
Pamela and husband Charles are pictured. His former mistress claims he told her he was going through a divorce. ‘He even made a joke that he was going to frame his divorce papers for me for Christmas. I knew his wife existed,’ she said
Judge Jennifer Rearden branded McGonigal’s actions a greed money-grab and said he harmed national security by repeatedly flouting sanctions meant to put economic pressure on Russia to get results without military force.
The shamed former agent arrived at court with wife Pamela, who made an impassioned and desperate plea to the judge for leniency in a six-page letter.
Guerriero, who was with McGonigal for 18 months before ending their relationship in December 2018, gave an insight into how she claims her former lover draws people into his web.
‘Charlie is the devil and the devil never comes to you with red horns and a cape. He comes to you with everything you’ve ever wanted,’ she told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.
‘And all of us wanted what Charlie was giving us. Which was attention, money, laughter, inclusion, praise – and it was all phony.
‘I don’t believe he was sentenced to nearly enough time. But I am 100 per cent confident that he is going to hell when he dies, so I will just have to live with the judge’s decision.’
McGonigal admitted a single plea of conspiring to launder money and violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. He accepted $17,000 in a plan to get Deripaska off the sanctions list.
Prosecutors also said he was negotiating along with co-conspirators to receive $650,000 to $3million in a hunt for electronic files revealing hidden assets of one of the oligarch’s business rivals.
The shamed special agent, an FBI veteran of 22 years, also faces sentencing in federal court in Washington DC on February 16, 2024, for hiding $225,000 in cash he received from a former Albanian intelligence official while working for the agency.
‘I just hope Charlie gets another sentence that runs consecutively and isn’t concurrent, so he’ll be in prison for at least another five years on top of his existing term,’ said Guerriero, who has moved from New York City to Florida.
GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley was drawn into that case – and Guerriero, 50, insists McGonigal used to boast about his friendship with the former US Ambassador to the United Nations. Haley’s office did not respond to a DailyMail.com request for comment.
Prosecutors alleged McGonigal asked the FBI’s liaison to the United Nations to broker a meeting between the founder of a Bosnian pharmaceutical company and Haley when she was at the UN during the Trump presidency.
It was alleged McGonigal’s Albanian contact would receive $500,000 from the pharma firm if the meeting happened.
‘He bragged about his friendship with Nikki Haley very often,’ said the former mistress, who has survived breast cancer. ‘He thought it would impress me. He would just drop it causally, when we first started dating and when he realized I wasn’t impressed he stopped.
‘He told me about the new UN Ambassador residence. He said it had gorgeous spectacular views and it was decorated wonderfully.
‘Charlie said Haley was very warm, had a good sense of humor, that she seems to be a very good mother, very hands on. They were pals and he wanted me to know that when he was still in the wooing phase with me.’
But Guerriero also criticized Haley in not denouncing her former lover if they had a link.
‘She’s not a traitor. But I do care that someone who is running for the presidency of this country at a time when we have a convicted traitor who was in the FBI, why isn’t she denouncing him?’
Guerriero told DailyMail.com that she and New York-based McGonigal were living in a sublet apartment in Brooklyn and were together from spring 2017 before she ended their relationship in December 2018. She is pictured in 2017
In early April, Pamela, 54, began posting a series of shots on Instagram from billionaires’ playground Palm Beach, posing in a leopard print bikini and sipping wine beside a pool
Pamela posted a photo in New York City at the Hotel Chelsea. ‘Stopped at the beautiful Hotel Chelsea… such a beautiful place,’ she wrote
McGonigal must report to prison on February 26, 2024 ‘and he’ll figure out how to survive,’ said Guerriero.
‘He’s a social butterfly, he needs to be the center of attention and be praised. He loves being the guy that everybody comes to either for help or a good time. He’s very, very charming.
‘People do gravitate towards him, they want to be in his presence. It’s impossible not to love Charlie, or it was. It was impossible not to be charmed by this guy.
‘I’m sure he’d make friends with other inmates. He makes friends easily.’
However, McGonigal, reportedly making more than $200,000 a year in the FBI and $850,000 annually after leaving to work as head of global security for an international company, will be stricken by his lack of materialism, added Guerriero.
‘Charlie is very materialistic, she said. ‘And he cannot be in any sort of discomfort, nor can he actually observe discomfort. Charlies is very queasy. He doesn’t like to see anything unpleasant. He really does get upset when other people are suffering.
‘When I had cancer, he cried all of the time. All he did was cry.’
Ironically, McGonigal will be distraught if he is moved from the general prison population to a segregated unit because he is ex-law enforcement, she added.
‘If that happens that would be devastating for Charlie, he would lose any type of social interaction.
‘He’s adaptable, but I’m not sure he’s going to be as adaptable to this situation. I think this is going to have a huge emotional toll. And an even bigger toll on the wife.’
Pamela McGonigal wrote in her pleas to the judge – obtained by DailyMail.com – that ‘trying to explain to you how Charlie’s actions and his subsequent convictions have impacted our family is very difficult.
‘It brings tears to my eyes as I write this letter to you as the pain, anguish, mental and physical trauma this has caused is indescribable.
‘This was not our life plan or how life was supposed to play out for us….
‘After retiring from the FBI, Charlie was ambitious and was looking to provide a good life for us as a family, and I believe that led him astray and cause him to lose focus on the reality of his decision making and actions.’
She added at the end: ‘I ask you for leniency when considering punishment for Charlie as he truly is one of a kind and someone who our family relies on as a figure of strength and inspiration.’
Guerriero blasted those sentiments from a woman she says falsely accused her of issuing threats.
‘Pamela McGonigal is defending a traitor,’ she said. ‘He is evil. If I were her, the first thing I would have done is get an annulment.’
The former mistress previously condemned Pamela McGonigal for flaunting her designer bling on Instagram while her husband was facing charges.
Photos included posing in a leopard print bikini in billionaires’ playground Palm Beach while sipping wine by a pool.
After other shots at ritzy celebrity spots in the Florida city, she posted a photo of a Chanel bag and two cocktails at the Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan.
‘She brought her Chanel bag to court,’ said Guerriero. ‘She is just rubbing the blood money in everybody’s faces. And then she wants us to feel sorry for her?’
Guerriero previously told DailyMail.com that she and New York-based McGonigal were living in a sublet apartment in Brooklyn and were together from spring 2017 before she ended their relationship.
The former kindergarten substitute teacher said: ‘I was with him because I thought he was going through a divorce, that he was finalizing it. We lived together and did the normal stuff couples do.
‘He even made a joke that he was going to frame his divorce papers for me for Christmas. I knew his wife existed. He would talk about his kids all the time, he’d talk to them in front of me.
‘But one day I received an anonymous note in the mail that said, ”I’m glad you have cancer and I hope you die’.”
‘I threw it out, and it took a couple of weeks to click where I believe it came from. I believed it was Pamela. At that point I ended the relationship.’
Guerriero, who volunteered for law enforcement causes, said she cannot remember exactly how they met, but added from the start ‘he was enamored with me’.
‘He really pursued me. He did all the work. He took me on a couple of nice dinner dates to begin with, really courted me.
‘At one point he said, if I don’t get to date you, I’m just going to look at you every time we’re at the same party or event and think “boy, that was a missed opportunity”.’
Deripaska has been under U.S. sanctions since 2018 for reasons related to Russia ‘s occupation of Crimea
Charles McGonigal and his wife Pamela are pictured leaving Manhattan Federal Court after he was arraigned on charges of violating US sanctions and was freed on a $500,000 bail in January
McGonigal told the judge in a sometimes shaky voice that he had a ‘deep sense of remorse and am sorry for my actions.’
At the time, the McGonigal family home was a three-bedroom, three-bathroom place in Chevy Chase, Maryland, which they sold for $799,000 in December 2021.
‘Were he and his wife actually estranged? I don’t know the answer to that question,’ Guerriero said. ‘But I do know he didn’t spend a lot of money on me. He would offer, I would say I don’t need anything – and now I think, thank God.
‘But he, himself, was always materialistic and superficial. Everything had to look perfect.
‘From a perfect haircut to an expensive suit, He always had an expensive suit and liked Armani. Pricey shoes, too.’
When Guerriero needed time to be with her father in Florham Park, New Jersey, McGonigal visited – and the pair had sex in an FBI vehicle.
‘It happened twice in an FBI Ford Explorer,’ she told DailyMail.com. ‘It was around the corner from my father’s house, in the parking lot of an elementary school.
‘He made friends with my dad, he would give him cigars, cufflinks, expensive bottles of wine. And my dad really liked him and they became good friends.’
Early in their relationship Guerriero said she discovered a bag of cash in their apartment in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn. It was October, 2017 and the notes were bound up with rubber bands. She estimates there was around $80,000.
‘I thought the cash was flash rolls for his agents or a source,’ she told DailyMail.com. ‘I didn’t think it was his. I was surprised he’d have big money in the apartment.’ McGonigal, who retired from the FBI in 2018, told her he’d won it gambling on baseball.
Guerriero said after the split that she emailed McGonigal’s boss William Sweeney with details of the affair and allegations of his links with Albania. She told DailyMail.comthat she deleted the email.