The other day I came across this — as far as I know untitled — painting by Russian artist Sergey Galanter on social media:

Untitled painting by Sergey Vladimirovich Galanter, 2020

Immediately intrigued by this work, I decided to look into the artist. He’s produced some other, similarly striking art. Sadly, I also discovered that he was recently sentenced to seven years in a penal colony by a court in the Tverskoy Disctrict of Moscow for, of all things, NFT fraud. According to the reporting on the court case in Izvestia, he ran a pyramid scheme, trying to sell his own NFT art. He is said to have raised $6 million from over 200 investors, reinvesting most of the money into the scheme, but allegedly also paying large sums to his wife, lifestyle blogger and finance influencer Maria Afonina, who is said to have used her online reputation to advertise his art and the NFT scheme.

Apparently, in a very Hunter Biden move, Galanter left his laptop with his landlord as collateral, who then sold it to a second-hand store. Eventually, the laptop made its way to an Izvestia journalist and also, somehow, ended up with one of the victims of the NFT scam. Its contents were apparently used as evidence in the case. Galanter, who is originally from Krasnodar, was first arrested in December 2023.

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