Enzo Ferrari, the founder of Scuderia Ferrari Grand Prix motor racing team and the Ferrari motor company, would be mortified to know that a group of fraudsters used a digital asset scam to buy one of the masterpieces of engineering produced by his company.

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently obtained an order freezing the assets of a former state senator and two other fraudsters who bilked investors in and outside the U.S. The SEC alleges Robert Dunlap and Nicole Bowdler worked with former Washington state senator David Schmidt to market and sell a purported digital asset called the “Meta 1 Coin” in an unregistered securities offering. The defendants made false and misleading statements that the Meta 1 Coin was backed by a $1 billion art collection or $2 billion of gold, and that an accounting firm was auditing the gold. The defendants also told investors that the Meta 1 Coin was risk-free, would never lose value and could return up to 224,923%. The defendants never distributed the Meta 1 Coins and used investor funds to pay personal expenses and funnel proceeds to two others parties. Some of the investor funds were used to buy luxury automobiles, including a Ferrari. The defendants raised more than $4.3 million from more than 150 investors. The SEC alleges Meta 1 Coin Trust, Dunlap, Bowdler, and Schmidt with violated the antifraud and securities registration provisions of the federal securities laws.

A copy of the SEC complaint can be found here.