Creator of fraudulent art-backed crypto sentenced to 23 years

A man who perpetrated a cryptocurrency scam using famous artworks as collateral has been sentenced to more than 20 years in prison, Cointelegraph reported. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois sentenced Robert Dunlap, 55, to 23 years in prison and ordered him to pay restitution to about 1,000 victims. Dunlap sold a cryptocurrency called Meta-1 Coin, falsely claiming it was backed by works from artists such as Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, and Salvador Dalí. He also asserted that the project was backed by a verified $44 billion in gold and $1 billion in art assets. Prosecutors revealed that these assets did not actually exist and that many investors had lost nearly their entire life savings.