ICO SCAM LIST: MORE THAN $1.6 BILLION SCAMMED

ICO Scam List: Fintelegram’s research reveals ICO fraud. So far, over $1.6 billion in investment volume has been attributed to fraudulent projects and we have only just begun counting. The number of unreported cases will be many times higher.

Experts regularly claim that up to 80 percent of all ICOs are fraud. But in fact, these allegations lack any evidence, and not even the extent of the ICOs actually carried out is transparent. The list kept by Coindesk, which is apparently the decisive information basis for many media, does not contain all ICOs by far, as we repeatedly find out in our research. Fintelegram has therefore begun to research a list of all fraudulent crypto companies with the respective damage amounts. The list is currently far from complete, but the figures are already alarming.

Top 10 ICO fraud cases

The biggest actual exit scam – when scammers simply disappear after a successful ICO – was probably done in Vietnam. Modern Tech probably raised up to $660 million dollars from an ICO for their Pincoin tokens. Similar to Bitconnect, the first ICO investors got their money back quickly and new investors were found through multi-level marketing strategies. Investors were promised yields of up to 48 percent per month. In January 2018, Modern Tech stopped paying out and instead distributed Ifan tokens, which were then to be floated on a stock exchange and the “great wealth” for the token holders was to come – a tactic that many of the fraudulent Crypto MLM systems had come to recognize as at least “time-saving”. The Modern Tech team dissolved their offices in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi and disappeared[2].

Second place in the ranking goes to Arisebank, which once wanted to become the bank of the crypto world (impish to think of the many similar projects). Here the operators (probably) actually wanted to achieve their self-imposed goals. But they ignored any legal regulations and were surprised when the American financial supervision SEC froze the accounts. Even if transactions are not made with fraudulent intent, negligence can be criminal.

‘I CAN SLEEP AT NIGHT KNOWING THAT I DID MY BEST’

This said Arisebank CEO Jared Rice. Will the investors of $600 million also sleep well?

ICO scam list: Another one bites the dust!

One of the most recent spectacular fraud cases spans three ICOs, carried out by the same scammers at about the same time. While a company called ACChain was officially registered in the British tax paradise of Jersey, the team was actually based in Shenzen, China. The three ICOs ACChain, Puyin and BioLifeChain raised a total of $60 million. As usual, the offices were closed and the team disappeared. According to the Chinese police, however, some fraudsters were caught.[3]

Fintelegram reports since March 2018 about the biggest Austrian fraud case, Cointed. Here, a total of $4 million had been collected from an ICO by February 2018. The managing directors fled abroad, the company was discontinued and large amounts are regularly debited from the ICO account and disappear with it.

Undetected figure for ICO fraud much higher. ICO Scam list to grow.

Some ICO scams are already recognizable as such when they happen. For example, team photos are often simply stolen and whitepapers simply copied. This type of fraud can now be researched quite easily with special software. However, it often takes months until an ICO fraud is discovered. Because even after the ICO, the social media channels are still partly supplied with information. Some of these scams even make it to the stock exchange (e.g. ArbitraCoin), then even the shortest trading volume is pretended and ripped off again and then silence returns. Since the number of ICO projects skyrocketed in the first half of 2018, it is very likely that the Fintelegram ICO-Scam list will receive many additional entries in the coming months.

The editorial team is looking forward to receiving information on further cases of fraud: [email protected]

The complete Fintelegram ICO Scam list

[1] https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/01/17/bitconnect-bitcoin-scam-cryptocurrency/

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/13/exit-scammers-run-off-with-660-million-in-ico-earnings/

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/94hoqb/acchain_office_photo_exit_scam/