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I woke up this morning and just wondering how i can be of assistance in this race of making the ICO clean, because ICO is not what is bad, the scam being done is what is making ICO bad.

So let us pick it from this point, a scammer draft a whitepaper to get people's attention, innocent investors pays money to the scammers through Ethereum address, the scammer gets the transfer into his own wallet, he then transfers it to another wallet on a local exchange that will convert it to FIAT and transfer it to the scammer's traditional account.

What if we trace it from here, at least the account was transferred to a wallet, Local exchanges should be able to scan through their database to see the bank the scammer transferred the money to when he requested for withdrawal, at least investors knows the address they transferred the money to, which can be disclosed to exchanges to use for further research.

To make my point clearer, let me use an example, MR JOHH has ETH in is abc123 wallet, i asked MR JOHN to transfer money to my account from his address, the token from MR JOHN abc123 wallet landed in my wallet address abc700, and then i transferred it to the wallet address of my local exchange abc800 which is LUNO to chnage to FIAT and transfer to my account, LUNO should be able to trace my details to my bank since they have my KYC done already and since the receiving bank too has the details. i.e abc123 to abc700 to abc800 to scammer bank, bank to be contacted throug legal means to disclose the scammer information for authority to use.

Not that easy as you said ,what gives you the assurance that the scammers ETH address is from fiat platform like luno? Let me give you my own example ,scammers don't use a single ETH address ,they will surely have another wallet they use separately to change to fiat but since there will be third party address the scammer can easily denied that he both the coins from the unknown third party address which the innocent victims deposited in.

I completely agree. We can't really identify that it is SCAM or not. When they leave the project we will be understand, but it is already too late.

There were a lot of project which stolen a lot of money people in here. Sad but true.

The only way I know of is not something possible,is there a way that crypto address can implemented users KYC? Of cos no way ,but that seems to be what could solve this crypto crime we all facing presently, just think about it, with every address you generated you must verify with user I.D this will erase scammers off for good but I guess its never going to be possible

You need proofs first to sue someone, and that whats the banks needs for them to give the personal informations of the owner of the bank. There are lots of things to do and crypto scam investigations are way harder than normal money laundering scams and frauds. If the banks are being played, then it could mean that any information you wish to acquire from them are certainly not possible.

Let's take for example a scammer organises an ico project and its turned out to be a scam or let's use the official term it fails he/she (the scammer) can say the project failed due to poor market conditions so it's just going to affect there reputation but if we investors can learn how to invest wisely we can stop this scammers from earning

Yes scammer can be tracked by this method but for that you need real verified transaction details and also the exchange should be very responsive and helpful, on the other hand it is seen that these scammers are smart and they use multiple wallets and sell on multiple exchanges or locally as otc so that is why it is very difficult to track them.

of course it is very difficult to accuse a project that is fraudulent, we must first analyze, usually the bitcointalk member has reviewed it in the https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0 section

in harmony before falling into the ponzi scheme we must know that crrptocurrency calm understanding works and understands the risk of investing

Your example is easy to say, but it's hard to do. How if they use the third party in their local area to convert fiat? That will be difficult to trace since you don't know who is the third party person who receives the token. It needs a lot of things to clean the scammers, and it won't end in a short time. It's related to many people, and you need to trace one by one of the wallet so you can find the real scammers and track him down.

Besides that, they should have prevented from being traced by anyone, so they could use the fake identity to cover their action especially if they are expert in their field.

And there's not just single currency involved. They do convert it into different currencies specially through instant exchanges that doesn't require an account like shapeshift and convert them online into other form of digital fiat currencies. They would avoid bank as much as possible and for larger sums would use offshore tax heavens to whiten the money.

You talk as if these scammers didn't anticipated all this things?man you are just young in this crypto world

These scammers knows everything and expected all the possible ways for them to be put behind jails

So what they do is learn each steps on how they cannot be traced and for the record only the stupid and fool scammers are being caught and the experts are still enjoying what they are doing

First of all they have to prove their identities for example on ICOBench where you can see ID report from the team.
Secondly they shouldn´t have big soft cap, they should manage their project without big investments needed. Less money raised in ICO, bigger market cap after ICO means higher returns.

This is a good and beautiful suggestion, but it will work if only those exchanges are ready to help in apprehending the scammer. They might start thinking that who do they release those details to. So i would suggest that if there is a central body, such as SEC, that will carry out the investigation after reporting to them.

This is also an issue, there are exchanges that do not appear transaction details whenever you transfer to them, so how will you know if it is an exchange wallet?

I think the only possible means through which will can know the full identity of all ICO scammers is the enforcement of third-party kyc for all the team members of a project and this should be the new normal of the industry. With this in mind, any project team will think twice before trying to do anything funny with investors funds.

And banks won't be helping it anyway. They don't easily do it and it needs a lot of verification and process towards the claim and besides they wouldn't disclose it just because someone said that they got scammed by that account holder and will just end up not recovering the money.

The least we can do now yet wise is not to invest in icos and just spend our money in most established coins.

No, that won't work. In order to get some information from the exchange, you need a request from the police.
But you can go to the police. Why? Because nobody stole anything from you. Cryptocurrencies do not have official status. And those "candy wrappers" that you transfer to the network, officially have no value.
Here is such a confusing situation.

Actually this is a good suggestion, but who checks the KYC from the third party? because sometimes the examiner must also be honest and neutral in things like this, because this involves personal matters that are given to everyone.

So many steps to do. I am sore just reading it.  ;D


I guess it will now depend on the new platform they are making now which is more secured.
Now, are they really going to pick that choice or will they just stay with the old ICO platform.
Investor side, I guess they will be the to make it happen. If no one will participate in an ICO project then we might really reach that cleanliness that you are urging to happen.

The quickest way to determine if an ICO is to find out whether their team members is a real person, through looking at their social media. Some, of really stupid ICO scam use random photo and random name for their team members, and it's easy to be tracked. However some ICO scammer have a real person, if that is the case you can check if their key members like Founder/CEO, Blockchain specialist, or ICO Advisors has several previous experiences. If they have experienced member, it is less likely to be scammed, however you still need to determine whether the ICO are going to be successfull or not, to do that you need to research deeply their whitepaper and other technical stuff of their project.

I think there are rarely ways to identify scammers. If there are clear ways, no reports of investors being scammed have taken place. People fail to identify scammers until the last moment. I have seen many so called good projects ending up scammers. In fact, I have been scammed out of hundreds of dollars from scammers. Strict regulations and set standards are required to discourage scammers.

Yeah i know what you mean. The local exchange in the scammer's country should have the identity of the receiver.
But what if the scammer do not send to their local exchange ?
I think it will be difficult to trace it just from the address of the scammers. If catching scammers was that easy, they wouldn't scam peoples anymore.

Just need to enter the mandatory passage of kyc for project developers. There are many ways to sell ETH and remain anonymous.

Is not that easy if they not put any link or any real name about them when create ICO, i wish that people not invest so much money on ICO and lose. I hope they will somehow recover money.

Its impossible to determine the real identity of those so called scammers. since most of the time they are not using their true identity and hiding in the anonymity of the crypto-currency for some instances they are just using fake profiles from the internet. thats why if we are not vigilant enough we just easily fall from those scammers hand without noticing it.

What then is the point of having cryptocurrency if addresses can be linked to their owners identities? Fiat currency does that already while crypto is meant to be about anonymity.

ICO isn't the reason scammers succeed.  Scammer are taking advantage of some features of cryptocurrency while avoiding the other features. They hide behind anonymity,  censorship resistance while avoiding features like transparency,  escrow, multi signature address, reputation and the use of smart contract platform (or any other secured funding platform) for scam free funding/development .

Before we fall or become victim of scammers we need to understand that cryptocurrency is risk investment that is more reason you need to invest what you can afford to lose.Scammers are intelligent thieves,sometimes you find it difficult to trace their actives. 

In my own idea, there is no way we could predict the identity of scammers as they are professional in their field of work, we as a community should be aware of what we are engaging with, its up to us to become a victim.or not, its just a matter of self awareness, thats the most important thing in this field.

Its true that every investment have a risk but we should minimizing that risk by doing some research. Its hard to know the identity of scammers because in many country ICOs not regulated. If ICOs regulated, i am believe scammers can be punish by law

Firstly, the scammers are not as brainless as you might think. If they do not mix the coins, they are already caught.
Secondly, this is already done. Therefore, everyone suggests that we need to use decentralized exchanges.

easy to say and hard to do
how if the scammer transfer all fund from scamming by zcash coin
u can't tracking the address or even the user who using that address

Basically, some other people can just use a chip mixer, or something that will going to hide their identity while paying some amounts, for example, in Bitcoin, there are projects that are intended for users to deposit their money and in return, it will be mixed and will have another address for their security.

In the first place, the first step this scammer will going to do is to hide their identity through the use of VPN softwares that will going to make their located changed, and not also using the usual browser that we have, another thing is to use another wallet address through the thirdparty projects that you are saying.

they are not lazy to provide and allow victims to traced them out, scammer do planning too before making any thing they already have a good set of plans on how they will hide everything without any trace, wallet mixer services are all over so they will enjoy the luxury bringing all the scam funds to one of this service and freely transfer everything clean to their local wallets.

for all I don't know exactly, but there are some things we can do to find out whether the project is transparent or not, such as in terms of the address of the team / project, their background experience and their work map. from there we can conclude how they worked before we joined the project.

Ico publishers are  smart enought to think of using other third party or mixing the transactions before they exit the scene,scam icos are hard to identify if the team behind it has been doing it for a long time.Professional scammers do know how to hide their dark intentions

This won't be easy because that is why crypto is decentralised. Most exchanges prefer to keep their community members anonymous and in this case, how do they assist to trace such scammer. Bottom line is, investors should be careful choosing projects to stake their hard earned funds.

Basically there will be traces of transactions carried out by scammers. To carry out wallet tracking requires special time and considerable human resources. I hope there will be a special elimination of scammers

This is very hard because many people remotely and masked do so, and calculate them to be almost impossible,although sometimes calculate,you need to be more careful and attentive,in order not to get to the scammers)so be careful)

It's true that doing it isn't wrong, especially for the common good to catch Scammers, but on a scale that might be beyond our strength it would still be difficult. In my opinion, we must unite to find a way and must have a network or authority about criminals, because we know that Scammers do it through many intermediaries that we don't know at all.

Checking their team regularly is something that must be done to be able to ascertain whether they are scammers or not. because this can make us sure that ico is cheating or not

Because scammer are smart for sure they are ready for that and they hide their real Identity and not caught by the other people.  Scammer have plan and in their list also on how not caught their real Identity. But I hope those scammer have someone have skills to know the Identity of the scammer so it will posted to the public.

I agree with your first suggestion and it is might definitely help on the long run. Project team and developers should be subjected to KYC compliant before they can get their ICO onboard. And to do this, a trusted and reputable third party who is neutral should be entrusted with the process. I think this is one of the things regulation will address.

I think it's not possible because we have decentralised exchanges which don't keep record of users personal data. So anybody can anonymously trade tokens on such platform and transfer it to another wallet without trace.

they rarely communicate on any social media, even they only post once in the thread and then disappear, so he is a scammer. in telegram or other chat groups, if asked about the project, they only answer at the beginning to attract investors, then the same thing will happen, they finally run away too.

I do not think there is any good in doing the inquiry about the scammers. They just could not be held responsible for a financial fraud they have done due to the absence of documentation. I have never heard of any scammer being penalized by a court or jurisdiction nor I have seen evidence regarding a scammer in crypto. You cannot track them down because of the absence of a track so better be picky in your investment projects.

You have a very vital point her mate and I give you kudos for always thinking of how we can support satoshi to make the system he has created for swift and easy payment not destroyed by these Lazy bone opportunist we call scammers.

It is really a sad thing that they have taken advantage of the anonymity of the system, and the only solution would be if the code can be re-write and the anonymous stuff taken away from it, otherwise, these guys are too smart and would have also explored every of your points and block all the loop holes. Exchanges too are sometimes, some of our problems.

It is not possible to find the scammers when they do all the things like a legit one and turns out into scammers once they got money on their hands but we can aboid the scam attempt from fake identity when we do enough research.

A fraudster can simply use a decentralized exchange to exchange ETH for some other token and there you will find nothing,this token will transfer to another wallet,and then change to another exchange for Fiat money.

Lol, the first question you should ask is what local exchange did he send the coin too, because if you don't know this then I think you search will never be possible since we don't expect all the exchanges that exist in the work to begin tracking all the addresses on their exchange just to find out who sent coin to their exchange, so I don't really think this your strategy will work, but thanks anyway for sharing, I know it would be of help someday if not to catch scammers, then maybe for something else.

The fact that they can scam people here in the space, that makes them smart.

Scammers know what they are doing, maybe it's possible to trace some scammers but majority of them are smart, they are careful not to provide trace that could lead to identifying their real identity. They usually use fake personalities and if we got caught with their scams, most likely we will not recover our investments, and just in case we will be able to identity them, the lack of regulation in the crypto space is one big problem of making this people pay the consequences of their actions.

That's the only thing that you can do trying so hard to understand every projects that you are eyeing to invest your money, lot of people who already suffered from scammed project are now being curious to investigate more before making any entry again, scammers is always around even you'll try to avoid them out best to be more careful.

The easiest thing to find out about a scam project is to research the team behind the project, most scam projects will take profiles from the internet and change names, of course it's hard to find similarities in images, but now there are many applications that can detect the similarity of images.

All of the scammers cannot all be professional scammers, we should still be able to use one or two scape goats as example to the other ones, just that it is not so easy, this anonymous system really has its own Advantage and disadvantage too, and the advantage is just too much for us to drop the idea.

Someone somewhere really needs to find solution to this problem, I believe that same way we have professional scammers are same way we have professional developers that could come up with a scheme that will make it very difficult for these scammers to operate.

It is not an easy process. Yes you got the point but imagine how long the process that you would do to trace all of scammer's transactions. And we cannot trust about KYC because we are not sure of the personal information giving in KYC is true. And using commonsense if you are scammer you will never give your true profile or informarion. The best thing to avoid scam is become knowledgable before investing.

We must carry out various data analyzes on ICO projects that we will make investments.
Without good analysis, we will not be able to choose the right ICO project. Choosing an investment is a vital thing.
When we fail, we will only suffer losses. So make the best decisions so that we can get optimal results.

Today there are many topics on the forum on how to independently carry out project analysis at an early stage. This is very useful for investors. They should be able to recognize scam.
If the project has no information about the team, it is better to stop on time and not to trust the project. After all, if the team has something to hide, then nothing good will come out.

No They are very well encrypted by other people. Track them almost impossible.

In the current system I don't think it's easy to find scammer directly from wallet address. What have been explained by OP is right. We can find scammers' identity by waiting them to cash their fund. What makes this hard is if the scammers decide to sell their funds with other people (let's say in this forum, a scammer trade his BTC to Paypal). I think there is no way to know their identity if scammers do so.

I think there is no way to identify all projects. The phishing project is increasingly sophisticated. So we can only try our best to understand the project we want to invest

With all these tools available for us to identify scammer’s project, the rate of scam is still very alarming. There is one problem that I see being faced by many people, so it makes it possible that we are the one really killing ourselves. I realize that 70% of people are too lazy to read, and if they don’t read, then how would they get clue to what is necessary to do to guide against being a victim of scam.

Like you said, most of the people who are also promoting this projects has been on this forum for a very long time, have they not seen these articles that will assist them know the type of project they should accept to promote?

The innocent investors out there are not from this forum, and they might based their judgment on what their friends or relatives are promoting, so there is need for us to start this process of ending scammers from this forum too by paying attention to this type of articles you talk about.