We study the statistics of the largest eigenvalues of $p \times p$ sample covariance matrices $Σ_{p,n} = M_{p,n}M_{p,n}^{*}$ when the entries of the $p \times n$ matrix $M_{p,n}$ are sparse and have a distribution with tail $t^{-α}$, $α>0$. On average the number of nonzero entries of $M_{p,n}$ is of order $n^{μ+1}$, $0 \leq μ\leq 1$. We prove that in the large $n$ limit, the largest eigenvalues are Poissonian if $α<2(1+μ^{-1})$ and converge to a constant in the case $α>2(1+μ^{-1})$. We also extend the results of Benaych-Georges and Peche [7] in the Hermitian case, removing restrictions on the number of nonzero entries of the matrix.