A Miami businessman burned a drawing he said was Frida Kahlo's to sell 10,000 NFTs, and Mexico investigated because her work is a national monument

Martín Mobarak, a Mexican businessman living in Miami, said he owned Fantasmones Siniestros, a 9-by-6-inch ink and watercolour drawing Frida Kahlo is said to have made in her diary in 1944. He valued it at $10 million. At a party at his Miami home in late July 2022 he took it from its frame, put it in a martini glass of alcohol and set it on fire. His company, Frida.NFT, offered 10,000 NFTs of the image at 3 ether each and pledged proceeds to charity. Etherscan records cited by Smithsonian in 2022 showed four sold, for less than $11,200 in total. A dealer, Mary-Anne Martin, said she sold the drawing in 2004 and again in 2013, and had never heard of Mobarak. He said he bought it from a private collector in 2015. On 26 September 2022 Mexico's National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature said Kahlo's entire work is an artistic monument under federal law, that deliberately destroying one is a crime, and that it had not authorised any reproduction. It opened an investigation into whether the drawing was an original or a copy. Mobarak said: "I don't regret it." The result of the investigation is not reported in the sources found^†.