The crypto market has become a goldmine for scammers, and they rarely face consequences. Back in 2015 and 2016, we had a bunch of revenue-sharing schemes like The Ads Team and My 24 Hour Income that scammed millions, and the owners just vanished without a trace. Then in 2017 and 2018, more fake ICOs popped up and tricked even more people. Honestly, there should be laws in place to help get people's money back. It's not like these criminals are hard to catch; they all have social media profiles, so punishing them should be pretty straightforward.
I used to be a victim of many revenue sharing programs in 2017 that used bitcoin as their mode of payments. Revshares could never be sustainable that is why those programs eventually died leaving members with empty bags and the owners with millions of money. Sadly I saw no one got sued and eventually brought into the justice system. Then we got into many scam ICOs whose perpetrators were there just for the money and nothing else. We now have to accept that scams are now part of doing business online. These scammers are using fake identities in order to evade the law and fool as many people as possible. Scams and frauds are now part of the cryptocurrency industry and soon this will even boom as more and more people can be enticed to enter this industry.
Well, I was also a victim of this scheme. In the year 2018, I was thinking that that specific year is the best time to be involved with the cryptocurrency full time. I joined a signature and thought that it was the best investment I had in my life. However, the ICO never had any updates after they did not reach their timeframes and milestones. I would love to see them being sued and put into the jail. However, I never seen anyone from them got so.
You wont still able to say that arresting these scammers is possible yet those social media profile being used are just dummy ones and no dumb scammer will publicly show his true identity online if the do plan on scamming on the very first place.Scam is everywhere even on and before crypto was created as long a place where do involves money there would always those criminal minds will think off some modus to gain easy money from people and crypto is a good place for them to focus due to anonymity.
You are right and also, I think why some government won't make a move to go in for arresting like that could be that, they have not explicitly made crypto a legal business and so they might not give protection or remedy to people who are investing on it. More like to say that, they are venturing in it at their own risk.
Scams do happen and will happen in any industry however with the cryptocurrency industry things are getting easier for talented and intelligent hackers because now they can target big and well-oiled platforms like exchanges. The recent hacks in Cryptopia and Binance showed that the prize to successfully enter them is astronomical. Imagine getting millions of dollars worth of coins and tokens while you are thousands of miles away and you are being supported by your government (North Korea style). And of course, there are small scammers on the pond those who are concentrating on doing business in the HYIPs especially victimizing newbies to online investing and those who are plainly greedy. Scams are here to stay and they can be evolving too to evade detection and to continue on attracting new victims. This is sad but true. Yet there is nothing we can do much but just being careful not be victimized with different schemes and systems to get our wallets out.
Scammers can't bea easily nabbed because most of them use fake identification even though they are appearing on most of the ads they placed. If they are the real guys behind such services, they'd be easily arrested if a case was filed against them, but most of them are still freely roaming around and just waiting for the next opportunity to introduce yet another service and scam people. Regulations and laws are already becoming stricter, but without a governing body scrutinizing such services up to its core, I don't think scammers using these avenues would thin out.
These investment schemes in the internet at one point in time a victim will also invite other people just to earn a little more with their referral/commission system that is why even though they are victims they also have tricked people into joining the scam and possible the people they invited also have invited other people (the cycle just continues) that is why it's really hard to actually catch the culprit as we don't even apprehend people directly working for the scam just the victims tryings to recruit other possible victims.
As much as we want to punish this people we cannot even catch them as they barely leave any digital footprint behind, the only thing we can do now is for a lot of people be educated enough until scammers see that they can't victimize any more people in the net.
There are many scam projects falling in the market. When you see such scam projects we just need to analyze deeply and ignore if you feel more suspicious.
This forum DTs are avaialbe for you to check and confirm what is best ICO projects.
Until you confirms that they verify the KYC details, please don't invest on that ICO.
In the past, there was no concept of the nature of financial crimes related to cryptocurrencies, many countries have ignored the scam reports at the small, medium and codified level.
One of the most famous scammers is the legally managed trading platforms and suddenly cheated/banned its users.
Tracking scammers is not impossible and these are some efforts ---> Bitfinex Recovers Stolen BTC with US Governments Help and Reimburses Clients.
Scammers are there to scratch our precious money, so you need to deal with them ideally.
Please refer this to deal the scammers and trash them out.
https://hackernoon.com/dealing-with-scammers-3201917e2ac3
Here is the SEC link to spotlight the scammers.
https://www.sec.gov/ICO
Until now, scammers still cannot be overcome with a legal umbrella for their actions except only a few of them with the role of government participation both in a country and between countries given that cryptocurrency actors are spread in many countries
We see a world full of secrecy in the cryptocurrency market but i see it differently. Even though we cannot see the user's personal info, we can track them using the third party exchanges or wallet he is using. Most exchanges requires KYC nowadays and this is what scammers afraid of their ability of hacking is the same as the government's ability of tracing them and if its proven then they will be punished as what has been said in the law.
The link that you quoted there contains educational information on how to spot or prevent being scammed via cryptocurrency-related schemes such as ICO and something similar.
I think it's quite helpful as long as you can understand and practice it. Most of the content is very basic and should be able to help you distinguish between scammy ICO or not. But it won't help you if you want to look for how to sue or punish scammers in detail.
how many ICOs here at this forum turned out to be scams?
more than you can imagine , it is not easy to catch the scammers and the best thing is just to avoid investing in any projects you have doubts about
usually risky means borderline scam and if the offer/ico sounds too good to be true it usually is
It is very difficult to establish and punish fraudsters if they committed these crimes using the Internet. They can be in any state of the world, and law enforcement agencies work very slowly if crimes are not committed on their territory. If there is no direct agreement between the two states on cooperation in this field and the extradition of criminals, then they act through diplomatic channels, and this slows down the whole process.
The situation can change for the better only when most states legalize cryptocurrency and will regulate the activities of ICO at the place of their registration. Then it will be possible to actually identify all the members of the ICO team and further carry out their search.
Exactly. And aside from having untraceable identities, victims may learn lesson from they way they were scammed but then as these scammers succeed in fooling people they will be using another way or trick to get peoples trust again by offering another kind of services. I dont think there could be better way to avoid being victims than making a personal, deep and thorough research about the whole thing they are offering before putting our hard-earned money into risk again.
Scammers are ruining the crowdfunding in our community, this is the reason why there are so many legit not getting funded because investors are afraid that they will get scammed again, we need regulation and a governing body that will run after these scammers and make them pay for their activities.
While most states will not register and verify the ICO team, as well as regulate the overall activities of the ICO, it will be very difficult to identify the identity of the ICO fraudsters and to effectively search and arrest them. In order to track and document criminal activity on the Internet in the whole world, coordination of the actions of law enforcement agencies within an international body such as Interpol is necessary. The efforts of individual states here will be ineffective.