Bitcoin Forum

I am here to confuse people who still think that any new projects that entered crypto space with teams that are able to show their faces on videos and even attend good crypto seminars anywhere around the world have nothing to hide, and they think its real project and far from scam, well the biggest scams in crypto space are able to cater away with that huge money because many believes they are real, The ceo and teams coming out in publics to discuss about the projects doesn't erase the fact that they can scam you.
Bitconnect did the same thing and miracle tele joined too

As many people said before, everything is possible in cryptocurrency but honestly speaking it is not only in cryptocurrency. In our world we could see something like this happened many times before, there is nothing called a guarantee in this world. Even a company with an existing product could do the same thing in the face of money, how could a project that only shows their face able to guarantee us anything.

There are different types of scam moves, some stay in the shadow to scam people, like ICO projects that steal people's identity and use them on their scam ICO websites, so its normal if people thinks that scammers can only hide, but now the scammer case is different, they come out in daybreaks and the sun won't burn them like vampires, the show their faces to make you see they are real and have no where to run, lol where the heck is regulation? these people needs to be deal with big time.

already there were a lot of such projects where developers and team members often appeared in public but then simply disappeared with the money. As long as the cryptocurrency space is not regulated by the authorities, it is very difficult to prevent such terrible things

Just invest to the projects that you are comfortable with. A team that shows their faces doesn't mean that they are serious or working, they can abandon the project anytime they desire. That's part of investing, the risk. It's the risk that we have to understand whenever we're investing to icos or ieos. If the real faces can have a chance to scam investors, well those fake ones really have the urge and desire to scam everyone.

No wonder some scammers are taking crypto investors for granted, they knew they can't be caught, that's why some exchanges are scamming even developers of their IEO funds, idax did same thing to few IEO projects since 2018 till now and they did nothing about it, crypto space is where criminals walk free, something must be done about this

No where seem safe in crypto world and this is what's holding crypto back, nothing are been done to those who scam people, they still leave them roaming about and once they exist scam they will build another project again to fool people once again, if these scammers are receiving jail terms they would have reduced alot

Would be a different story if regulations find its way into crypto space, scammers won't be able to roam free anymore, for now we need to protect ourselves from this wicked beings, i think the best way presently is to stop investing new project and choose old projects instead.

Unfortunately, no one is safe from fraud; there is always a risk. Very often scammers use visual tactics, because it is easier to attract investor confidence by dulling their vigilance. When choosing a project, you definitely need to be more careful and study all the information about both the team and the project itself.

I agree with this, as an investor we cannot say that our investments have no risks at all. In investing there is always a risk no matter how deep you research about the project you are investing. But as we do our own due diligence in picking up the best project we minimize the risk in investing thats why we have to.

Every investment has its risk and we cant easily avoid scammers. They always targeted those investors which is greedy who wanted an easy profit from their investment. Scammers know the weakness of investors.
These days there's a lot of project showing the real faces of the team, but they still scam their investors because of money. They promise a good project but once they got their hands in the money they will show their true intention.

Yes, I agree. although the developed introductions their product from their projects to the public in various cryptocurrency events, does not make them a trusted project. they are indeed a team but the product they created is sometimes just a fantasy and there were no plan to realized just trying to find a way to quickly get money.  
After the fundraising is over, they will abandon without any responsibility to the investor.

Well, you made a good point. The use of team photos is one of the easiest ways ignorant newbies get deceived by ruthless scammers. The team photos are not necessarily bad. It all depends on the team.. if most of the members prefer using team photo, it is their choice.
I think the preference for projects with team photos was partly responsible for the increase in scams or substandard projects using team photos.
If people begin to care more about projects whitepapers and Roadmaps contents rather than fancy pictures , bad projects will begin to find raising funds with cryptocurrency crowdfunding more difficult.

That's indeed if the real team can't be a good point to determine if that project will never be a scam. bitconnect is just a big example for that but remember about sometimes there will be a developer who try to change all of the agreements between the developer and investors which can be considered as a scam too.
Change the roadmap at the middle of the development progress is also considered as a scam too.
This is not appropriated act by the developer.

Real team doesn't mean if that will become a legit project but a project with a fully working product that already used by a lot of people and generate revenue to the developer will never make the project becomes a scam project.
We must be careful with the team right now.

The reason for some projects why they are not hiding their identities is first they are confident with their projects will become successful that’s why they invite people to fasten together and then eventually it end up to a disaster which will be consider scam. Come to think of it, why will you show your face if you know from the beginning you’re just deceiving people, of course you will easily identify and put in jail. Next is when other video projects are just used by the scammers, but the real video and project is real and you didn’t carefully notice that it is just a fraudulent one (many sites are doing that). So I guess the best thing that we can do is to stick to pioneer and establish projects which already collected many trust to the customers.

But with these things you can make an easy analyst to know more the background team behind the project. You will know their experience or their ability when they make a seminars. I'll be prefer to choose the project if they show their identity to public comparing to choose a project that the team behind the project is very closed to share what he has to many people.

Cryptosphere has been filled by many people who just make a profit for himself or another way to say was filled by scammer. So, we can't compare which is good and which is bad team/people. So as it will make many people confuse to store their money to invest, just a courage person who will gain much money although the risk that will be faced is very close to him.

Anyone in 2019 believing that showing pictures or see videos of people they are dealing with gives them a guarantee of not getting scammed should at this point wake up, even videos this days can be doctored or altered.
A good project has no relationship with picture or videos

In this kind of industry even showing their real faces or making a video is not 100% guarantee scammer always a scammer.
Dont be fooled for those project that have no real intention to make a real product always remember that theres no assurance in this world.

It's obvious that there are some kind of criminals that will do exit scam even though everyone has known their faces because they are criminals or if not is a shameless people after all. What we mean with knowing the team is not by knowing their faces but their background, imagine if the developers is a real harvard graduates and doing an exit scam that means he's sacrificing all the hardwork he has gone through for just few money but people who has no special background usually have nothing to lose even if they make an exit scam. It's always background that matters the most not the face, sometimes people are just misunderstanding about the concept of knowing the developers behind a project.

Real team and identity is important, but not to the point that we will based their face on the project. Attending in seminars and event is needed to gather more funds so eventually they will really appear personally. Being registered project, idea and plans should be consider. It's easy to show their face today and do drama later on how they will exit in the market.

Its still possible for that team to scam the investors as I saw a lot of people photo shopping their identity in order to hide themselves or using stock images. Being public don't bring any guarantee that the project is legit this is why you must never engage with projects that don't make KYC too so just IcoBench if they complete KYC , if not , stay away.

The moment crypto scammers start getting arrested for scamming people crypto space will breath easily, just think about this if new investors come into crypto space or on this forum and read about these posts of ours i am sure he or she will flee, scammers are getting bold to do their bad habit without fear of getting caught, its really bad

You have not come to confuse anyone, rather you have come to call the attention of people to the fact. There are projects that pay some less privileged people and give them script to read in order to disguise as if they are the team of the project. Some of them accept this offer because they are in need of money, so they do it immediately they are offered the opportunity.
Well, I am not surprised, because it keeps happening and that is not what we should depend on as the only focus for our research.
Also, no research can give 100% guarantee. Which is why you are to invest only what you can afford to lose.

You are absolutely correct, that was happen to me when i invest in one of the ICO that turns into an exit scam, Team are showing their real faces in public thats why we think that its a legit one but suddenly we are all wrong, I think someone or a group of people has already file a class suit in 2018 .but i dont know what was the development in those case. since theres no information about it.

You can imagine how bold they are but they did it. One project that I can name is the Bubbletone, whom the CEO had been speaking on youtube interviews along with his team members but after the ICO they just shut their mouths up but only respond on telegram channel. Never was this project listed to any exchange besides HitBTC and was also delisted. Nothing had been heard of them again.

I honestly agree with you. Even with the team showing their real faces, there's no guarantee that they're going to be considered legit. This is why we should invest or participate at our own risk. There are several factors aside from showing their real faces such as reverse image search fake or stolen images, plagiarized whitepaper, etc.

There's a scam product called Payasian promoted by some of my "uneducated" contacts on Facebook. In their official Youtube video, they do have a company presentation event where one of the development team members are present under the name "Kellya Kenya" where I doubt it's her real name. I honestly think that's not her real name on the passport while her descent is Chinese.

It is true, even if team members are real, they can easily run away with money. Thats why by choosing in which project to invest/promote, I am always looking at the product and the roadmap, if those conditions are legit, there is no problem.

Recently I was asked to send my photo and a link to my linkedin account for a some reward. They said they would post this data on their project’s website. It would not be surprising if I were there as a member of their team ;D.

OP is right, this is possible with ease: real people, with real data and dark affairs.

But when someone commit scam after they were known to public then they will be in jail for sure mostly so people who have the intention of scamming will try to hide their real identity as much as possible.On the other way showing faces cannot be the legit project as well because they can find loopholes and run away with your money from the laws but chances of happening is still low.

Some scammers like playing safe, i remember the time i entered this space i always thought that scam projects are the ones that have anonymous teams but later i even seen projects from 2012-2013 that have anonymous teams and are still doing well following their roadmaps as well but i never thought that scammers have the nerve to start showing their faces to scam investors too, what is going on with crypto?

there are many other crypto project do the same thing, they make weekly ama update for investors to make it look like legitimate , of course more trust from people means more investors will enter and invest in that project.

Nothing is impossible. Even though they appear in public, scams are still scams. there are many projects like that, not just bitconnect. almost all projects released in 2017 yesterday, they commit fraud. so start looking for the project first and see dev's experience, if he has a bad reputation, then don't invest there even though it looks legit.

Thanks for advice, so if real faces can't guarantee the project is not scam  ???
So that is more hard to identify where is scam project or not. Maybe the only way to check project scam or not is by identify is it ponzi or not. Bitconnect we know is like ponzi scheme. Also for more secure, invest only on known project where already trusted many years.

One new way to deceive investors, using bounty participant photos to make it look realistic. very annoying, but that's the reality. that's why we have to be more careful in providing personal data even if it's for KYC or others. always be alert because the data is very important.

I agree with op's assertion, however I would point out that ICO team members using their own, verifiable pictures and whatever other docs they release to the public is an excellent act of faith on their part.  Of course that doesn't mean investors cannot still get scammed, and examples have been pointed out where that happened. 

But when you see an ANN thread for a new project and it comes to light that the team members are all fake, or they're using cartoon avatars instead of their own pictures, that's a sure sign that the project is a scam.  That's happened more often than not as far as I can tell.

So I would say that it is *necessary* for those faces to be real, but it is not *sufficient* to ensure that a scam isn't in progress.

That's how thick their faces are, they can scam you upfront. They are the cancer of this society shame on them that they are feeding their families with that dirty money. People doing that can never sleep at night, well if they keep doing that they will land in jail soon and pay for their crimes.

the publication of all the teams in the project is not a reference for the project to have a future, not a scam. some even give access to social media and are followed by many people then they block accounts and disappear. some projects have been like that, I think we've all seen a lot of manipulation teams in a project. usually, only a few people are real, and the rest is stolen from other project data.

Yes, because even though the team has shown its true face, it does not mean they will not cheat, because they are also human beings who have more desires, so the potential to cheat others is very open to do.

We have seen many public figures involving in scams so its not new thing and its not only in crytocurrencies but you can google it and you will find scams in every feild involving monetary transactions.The team behind the project misrepresent their objectives and false information in whitepaper and makes their project look attractive to the investors and when they raise funds they simply dissapear and don't respond and block their accounts. So what can be done in this type of scams?Just try to stay away from them.

You're right with what you said because majority of cryptocurrency investors believe every project which have genuine team which their identity are confirm are scam free while scam are done in varieties way (breaking agreement had investors, roadmap manipulation etc) cause a scam crypto project does not necessarily have to exit the market.

The fact is that when the team is real, you can’t immediately determine whether they will turn out to be a scam or not. Sometimes a team comes up with a hoax when they realize that this is possible without consequences, as they think. Either one of the team members turns out to be a scammer, most often this is the project manager. They all do not hide their faces when they raise funds.

Yes you're right but it's unlikely they turn out as scam reasons
1. If they show their real faces, they're known people can track them in real life.
2. Their real face stops lots of things.

You didn´t know this? The best scammers do not have problem to show how trustworthy they really can be. They can give you proofs of registrations, proof of legal business, everything seems to be true, but it is not.  :'(

RachelX VR project recently did an IEO to 4 exchanges including Vindax and Latoken, their team uses their images but were cartoonized of some sort. I was surprise no one really post a scam reputation about the team and the project. None of the scam busters were trying to question them.

I can see the ANN thread created were bumped by newbie accounts almost everyday but I see they go on, maybe because they were doing IEO but if they were doing ICO, thread must have been filled with scam accusation.

Many team and owner never show their real face to the public and you have keep way if got ICO investment like this because become scam ICOs coin, if they are real face will show who they are and make discussion with their youtube or social media facebook and twitter for the investor.

Some of these faces are not really from that of the developers but instead, some paid actors who are used by these dev teams in order to cover up their real identity. While Bitconnect is a clear exception of this, which led to most of their executives being arrested and facing prison time, still some are out in the open even though their faces are posted on the internet. I don't really trust ICOs that contain images and names that are not verifiable using multiple sources which could not be paid by any private entities/individuals. Those dev teams who do are usually in it for the long run and not just until they hit the exchange and dump the coins.

They likely, see OP posts, check Bitconnect and Miracle Tele.  or if you are keen to your society, you can go out and see for yourself those scam companies that offer trading profit from cryptocurrency and sell you packages of investment that have high yield profit.


Sadly not all people are informed about the scams of these people so they can continue to scam people again and again.

The best lies are the ones look real. Bitconnect really did a number in the reputation of altcoins and I will not be surprised if another project will follow their example. Yet I must say that those developers who shows their faces in the public should not be condemned easily as bogus. It's not about the faces actually. We can do a little stalking online and judge their personalities on that or like if you can find any sort of information that can make you trust the dev team. After all, all of the victims of the scams have seen something special in that project. Use that as a way to confirm your insights and settle your doubts. But this doesn't mean it will eliminate the risk of being scam. It just lessens it because the industry still has no regulations. So, there's nothing else we can do except to take care of ourselves.

That's right, even if the team is real in any company, then there is still a big chance that this company will turn out to be a scam, because now no one is afraid of anyone and unfortunately scammers even display their real photos and data and still cheat investors and run away with money, so in cryptocurrency investments you always need to be very careful.

Yes, people must not believe in anything which looks suspicious.
Even a registered company can scam you easily. For example you can start a company virtually in UK for less than £100. Some investors believe it as a good sign. But technically it is not.
No need to say about pictures/documents at all as they can be faked so easily.

People are not blindly trusting to the project, the real faces behind the project are not determinant for discovering the reliable project. Social media shortcuts on the ICO website can be a fake in which team members use the data of other developers. These steps turn out to be an entry-level scam, so checking the projects carefully can change the investor's decision in my opinion.

Teams that are showing their faces, doing AMA's, all kinds of interactions to the community doesn't guarantee you the fact that they will not do an exit scam regardless if their fundraising become a success or not, and we've all seen that last 2019.

Even though the amount of scam projects became smaller in 2018, there were still some that were able to trick these investors. This CEO admitted to the legal court that he issued tokens that has no utility or value (https://www.coincurb.com/news/karatbars-timeline/?utm_source=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.coincurb.com%2Fnews%2Fkaratbars-timeline%2F%3Dlx), and they're in such a big mess now. You also can't trust a project just because John Mcafee or other big players in the space starts promoting this certain coin, we all have to play it smart.

Scammers are not afraid of anything in last times, so faces is not a garauntee of anything

There is no safe investment in the cryptocurrency market if we don't do research first. Investments that I think are safe are investments in coins that are already in the top 50 or top 10 because they already have large liquidity and are also traded in large exchangers

Coins listed in on exchanges tend to become scam even after all they've accomplished.

Teams who didn't ask for funds are pretty much confident they can't end up scam because they didn't ask anything from investors, they are just releasing and distributing airdrops of their token. They reason out they didn't received money from anyone but when exchange listing comes, its when they greediness burst out.

This is very true,  showing identity does not truly mean that a project team won't scam,  there is a technique that they do use,  once they are being listed on an exchange,  they will tell investors that one of their team member dumped his token,  meanwhile it's a game plan from the whole team and they later exit scam

I have encountered plenty of projects like these and they even reach their softcap but after that they just run away with the money. Showing their faces doesn't mean that they are not a scammer already.

Yes, miracletele is the latest one that did this kind of exit. They even have an existed project and they raised millions of dollars but after that the CEO exit first and followed by the rest of the team.

Most often, the organizers of the project use actors. They take pictures of different people and present them as employees. These people have nothing to do - they are a wrapper. There was an FTC project that abandoned its investors and disappeared. It turned out that no public person was a real employee of this company. This happens in many areas of activity and at the moment nothing can be done about it. People will cheat and even more so in cryptocurrency.

Worse part is that they were never caught until we realized they are gone. But there were also special cases though. I have seen projects where from the start they were branded as scam until the end of the ICO it wasn't proven and they listed the token which the price is way more than we expect. One project like ETHBits ($0.126919 USD (63.11%)) which still is active. Its platform isn't even used by anyone, not anyone I heard that someone used the exchange.

Same strategy with Ponzi / HYIP they will point finger to one of their co admin but the real score is it's been planned before the business run.
Moving back to this scamming thing, even the team show their real faces if the intention is to purely scam investors money there's still lots
of ways to do it. Experienced scammers planned well to the point that it will looks like a legit project and attractable to get investors attentions,
the scamming part will happen when the team got satisfying funds to declare the project being failed then runaway with collected money.

It's easy as to photoshop a stock image of a random person, and put it on a site as if this is your team.

And we've seen a ton of instances where unscrupulous teams who know that they have no qualifications whatsoever put on these stock images onto their team page go bust. Just because there is a team doesn't necessarily mean that the project is somehow more legit.

And even if the photos are not photoshopped, what extra do you gain by having a team that you have never heard of or met in your life? Does it add to your legal recourse? No.

Showing pictures and attending cryptocurrency seminars has been a strategy that really worked for a lot of projects that turned out to be scam. ProFish is an example of such projects.

I hope they can still get caught by the authorities since they've already shown their faces. I mean, if that person is a scammer, the government must be doing something about it. Just because it is cryptocurrency-related stuff, you can't do arrest to these people. They ruin the crypto space to a high degree.

It has become normal to encounter such situations. It is the same as stealing someone's money in real life. Sometimes there is a mask on your face and nobody sees you, sometimes you have nothing to fear and do not even wear a mask. So some situations like this cause inevitable loss, and you can not know what to believe. Experience may be your only assistant but there is little possibility of it being useful.

Every investment is a high risk and unfortunately now we can't fully avoid scammers. Neither in crypto market or in real life. Scammers are everywhere.  And if team shows its faces it doesn't mean you can trust them, they can abandon the project anytime they want.

Seems like this.
Even though some projects are dead not by scam,but I'd say many projects failed due to team give up.
https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2019/01/13/reasons-failures-blockchain-projects/

there already reports talked about the reasons about projects failures.

they can manipulate their personal data, and also sometimes their projects fail to be developed so they will leave. because even if the team dares to give their data transparently but it will not guarantee the authenticity of the project and also the benefits therein

And here we are having people who are comparing real life fiat criminals to crypto criminals, real life criminals still hide from the law and court, avoid coming out to the public because they will surely get caught, its not the same with crypto

of course not, I have participated in a project like you said, they did it very well like nothing happened, but after collecting funds when their ICO suddenly disappeared there was no news.
that's why it's so difficult to distinguish between a scam and a legit one.

You also need to provide more  of evidence before you can file a case against the scammer , mostly before you will catch them scammer delete all those evidence that you can have even video they upload .

There are projects that were legit through and through when you check on their website, whitepaper, ANN thread, and everything. Only a careful scrutiny will expose a certain scam portion on their project. And mostly, these are scams from a legal standpoint. It may not appear like that in the eyes of the normal investors. For instance, Centra was a project that was great. They were able to raise a big amount. They had a complete set of real people in their team. They even had Mayweather the boxer promote their project. But only to end up just like the rest of the scam projects.

I agree with what you've said because I've had some experience with the project named "Atlantico-network" which I believe that the CEO itself is just a guy who got paid by those scammers to show his face for their promotional videos and making some live AMA. I also found that they fake the amount they are raising during the token sale to attract their participants to invest  before the token runs out.

There is a good thing though for a team showing their faces to public because investors can use those videos as evidence when they file a case against them if ever the project turns out to be a scam.

I think not necessarily the project that shows their face is completely secure.
I've found the project outputs the ETH platform a lot of fake faces and has a strange project and bad whitepaper.
They could have escaped without guilt for not the face they were wearing.
For the project that true they are original is also not necessarily safe, could be their project just running while at the beginning and not in the management anymore.

Indeed, there is no guarantee that is not a scam project if they show their real face.
But at least the team can go to the court if many peoples report them, like the CEO of Titanium project.
Invest when you really trust the project, and only if you can afford to lose it.

Miracle tele shows the real face after a dramatic scene of exiting as the CEO leave the project and other team follow. So what is this, just like that? How about the investors who believe, there should be a punishment or reimbursement of ICO investors here since the money has been collected only to be disappointed like that. Many are angry with Miracle Tele so I'm hoping there is someone who can put them into warmth place for meditation of their awful sin.

yeah, greed makes them do anything including by showing their identity in public.
their goal is that more investors trust them and are interested in investing in the scam project they make.

not only in the crypto world, in the real world too many things happen like that. even the closest and most trusted person can steal our money. so, to avoid that happening to us, it's better to be careful and wiser in making decisions.

I would like to add Bitmillex to the list and the infamous Adab, they are doing a lot of webinars but cannot complete what they promise to their supporters, each one of them has a version on how they scam their investors, but in the end, you'll know that they are not doing everything to complete their roadmap and what they promised to their investors, and blames the market for the misery, it's like an endless cycle of keeps blaming the market.

Yes, that is true. Many scam indications are not just 1 or 2. Which in essence money changes the attitude of the developer. A good developer can be greedy because the money he gets from investors is very tempting.
In my opinion also coins that enter the market and the price is far below the ICO price, including a scam. Because it's a form of fraud, even though the market price depends on the buyer. But the buyer (not investor) also has a reason why the coin should be worth that.

Of course have witnessed a lot of projects like that, I mean they show up their real identity during ico/crowd sales and there after they disappeared, I don't want to mention names here.

Very funny, how will one be wiser and careful when choosing nee projects to invest in? every good and bad projects have teams that will show their faces either they are here to scam people or to deliver good service to the people, even if these people are living next to us there is no way to read human mind and know their aims

One more thing. that the investigation of scammers is not like any other crime. and it's rare if we see a large number of scammers being caught or revealed to the public. and very regretted because this crime should be reduced not just growing. and until now I have rarely encountered a disclosure of a scammer case to the public

Social media ICO twitter or Facebook never update live streaming with description about the ICO goal for the future by team, they never show live their face to the investor, will be an ICO use fake team picture in their website or not, if team are real why they never make live discussion in Youtube ICO channel and never want to live their face with social media account like Facebook and Twitter? I need to see team ICO is real and owner is not fake to trust invest with ICO project.

There are so many scam projects that is creating disturb in the crypto-market. I believe investors should wisely select projects. Scams projects are killing good projects. We can check project by market trend (https://www.coincurb.com/) before investing money but some initial steps should taken against scams projects.

Yes some projects even goes next level by uploading a picture with some famous persons in crypto and calling them as advisors or to lure investors. 'cartaxi' is an example here, they posted a photo with vitalik buterin. Some users thought vitalik is recommending this ICO.

It's really possible and we can't deny the fact that even our trusted people and those who are showing legitimacy could still scam us. Everything is possible and crypto and most people are tempted to commit a scam. However, there are still people who are genuinely and honestly offering generous rewards.

They definitely can as crypto is still the wild west of the financial sector, so those people tend to get away without much consequences for their actions. That being said, I especially enjoy watching footage of person-to-person confrontations between these CEOs (and other staff) and disgruntled investors at conferences and other crypto events. Its just so damn satisfying.

Definitely

I mean era changes.
People don't really care about their identity anymore even it they commit fraud
Furthermore, don't always trust faces that is listed/published on websites/journals

They can use people's name and claim its theirs
Always becareful with something that you have putting money in

Now scammers are rampant, they are not picky looking for victims. And they are increasingly daring to surface. Now in the world of crypto again tested with many project scams, therefore don't trust too much about a project. Although the project looks real with photos and videos shown their teams. For the sake of money scammers will do anything to convince his victims, so returning to each of us must be able to filter. Should more careful in choosing projects. Check everything carefully, don't miss them. If you find just a little strange, leave the project.

Indeed the cryptocurrency market can be said to be like wild wild west because there is no regulation from the government. If regulations from the government already exist, I think law enforcement can punish them but because of the absence of regulations, it is difficult to ensnare them and bring them to justice

That's the risk when you deal inside this types of investment, there's no government who holding any jurisdictions and scammers can easily work around inside the market. Even they shown their identity it's easy for them to denied everything once being caught. Scammers are good they already
master the artistry of finding victims and easily get supports from those who are not aware with this act of scamming.

There's a wild out there better to learn how to work  with those potential scam projects.

Because no authority can actually go after them even if they show their real faces, they have no reputation to protect, they are more concerned  about what they will generate so they are ready to go any length to convince people to believe in their project,

Now having the real faces of the team behind the project is not enough guarantee to determine the legitimacy of a project, the situation is nauseating.

There is no definite grip that we can trust in the world of cryptocurrency. A project we can trust if we have started listing on exchangers and have a large transaction volume. New projects are indeed risky because sometimes the developer team runs off funds that come from investors

Indeed i agree with you. We should still be wary in projects that we want to invest, even if the team are showing their real faces since we are in the internet even if they showed their faces, we still don't know their locations so, if they want to run away, they can still run away there are 2 projects that turned scam and their team members are real persons this is bitconnect and miracletele

This can happen in real life when scammers hold meetings to advertise fraud projects, It's not surprising if they,
  The scammers appear on the internet with their real photos.

USI TECH that brought me to my kneels were going everywhere, Dubai, USA, England and other places. They even claimed to have a large mining farm and created TechCoin which they sold to the public, I never bought their coin because it was a fraud. Today it's an history. Trust team at your detriment.

You talking about that annual ceremony held at Thailand by Bitconnect right? As far as I know, none of the key peoples involved in the development were present over there. If you are talking about Carlos Matos (the meme guy), he was if I recall correctly was just an investor who was promoting bitconnect.
I would say at least if all those main team and developers remain totally public, there is a high chance they won't be scamming anyone. But like you said, you never know. They can scam away the money and escape all legal penalties.

With the development of social networks and the Internet as a whole, it has become very easy to steal someone’s identity, because all information about a person is available to everyone. And for experienced scammers this is not a problem at all. Especially when huge amounts of money are at stake.

means that if they can do that then investors should do an analysis of the team that is in it. therefore many references to find a team that is experienced in this case investors can reduce the suspicion about falsification of identity within the team. but it needs to be recognized again that an experienced team may not necessarily be able to bring the project to develop properly

Yes, we cannot sure whether the project is real or scam just from the team's face.
Due diligence is always required for investors who want to invest on cryptocurrency project.
I think investing in IEO on a good cryptocurrency exchange is the best option to avoid scam project now.

although they show their real face they could do exit scam with another ways.the most thing that usually did was let projects die when already listed on exchanges.even in IEO projects could happen on this way.moreover if they launched on unreputable exchanges with low trading   volume.

it is better when they are already registered and traded on an exchange. there are many projects that just after they finish selling they disappear. the face of the development team is not a strong reason the project will not fool us.

You are right. Con artists always do their best to convince potential victims. A profile that shows a real face is not a guarantee that it's a promising project, it could be someone else's profile that was falsified. Conversely, there are also projects that hide the profile of the development team, one of which is Minter, they use a superhero avatar to represent their profile. In fact, Minter has continued to show good and promising progress to date.
See? real or hidden profiles are no guarantee. Then we must be more careful in analyzing the project.

I have seen several projects as well that have legit team members but turned out to be crap. The problem with this is that it is difficult to run after them even if they have faces and names in public. Are you going to hire a lawyer if you invest few hundred bucks? Maybe if you are a big time investor, you can proceed with legal actions but more than likely they can escape from their set Terms and Conditions for the investors. They will always find loopholes to avoid possible incarceration of their wrongdoings.

Scammers have no shame. I was scammed a few days ago of about $50 trying to but something here locally. I know what he looks like and his full name since he gave it to me. The thing is the way he was talking made him seem not to be a scammer and I was promised a refund. However, I have not got one after a week and to me that constitutes a scam. I actually don't know what is going on but I reported it as fraud to my bank so hopefully something will get done. It isn't just about losing the money it is more about the fact that someone undeserving has gained something. He does not deserve it yet he has $50 of my heard-earned money and that is what pisses me off the most. So no scammers are shameless they even talk themselves into believing they have done nothing wrong. Very sick people. Scammers need to be taken care of harshly.

indeed at this time there are so many like that, many projects are stealing other people's photos to make fake projects, so when you find a new project it's better you can see the team first, make sure that they really are the real face and indeed develop the project which is being launched, so you should know everything before participating as an investor in an existing project.

Exactly, since the faces teams display on their website are most likely fake identities from unknown people, it won't cost them nothing to scam people with such identity,  this is just telling everyone both investors, hunters to be more observant, do proper research on the teams images to see who will come up, since scammers are being very creative this days.

The difficulty of investigating the existence of this penipuna although scammers display their real faces make the steps of this process also is increasingly difficult because usually IEO also has an agreement with the exchange. and also some countries themselves still do not have clear laws regarding cryptocurrency so the law is hanging because there are no specific criminal acts

Good point. I think everyone already knew the faces of the real people that were behind that Bitconnect scam. Still they scammed people nonetheless.
There should be more regulations these days for who can create projects and who can not.

Yes, many public teams are still willing to cheat users. I can give an example, that is the exchange project Coinhe, they cheat bounty hunters, trying to make unreasonable rules to steal their money.

There are many projects that put a real face on their team. if they have succeeded in fraud investors with their useless projects they will continue to make projects to fraud investors
And there are also those who take photos of someone to be used as fraud and be careful if there any bounty or airdrop asking for kyc for withdrawal, because it is very possible to abuse of identity

Research is the key for us to find out if the project is scam or not. There are a lot of project that can be called as scam even though their team showing their true faces and identity in the public. The identity of the team behind the project is also matter but we should not always trust them.

Yes, this is new legerdemain of scammers to show their real faces with different names to target those people who are new in crypto world and they are getting successful day by day this is really a serious issue we have to be aware and we have to aware new people about this with the positive understanding about crypto I am definitely sure this will stop soon with the help of experienced and intelligent people.

They already have the money to defend themselves or change their identity and hide from other countries where the prosecutor cannot reach them, early ICO that scam people easily get away so they just continue to scam people, the best way is to totally abandon this ICO's and just concentrate on the coins/tokens that are already in the market, at least you have a chance there.

It is part of their strategy in order to attract many investors who can easily got scammed. When I'm doing investment in ICOs, I do not just look about their product, I also look and research about the identity of the developers for me to know if the project is scam.

If these companies do KYC, the companies and team must have KYC too, in this way if ever they try to exam their be way to track them, regulating bodies or government unit that focuses on investments even in crypto world as long as the team or company is present in that area should have these regulation to determine their ideny or atleast a safe gear if they try to scam since they are government registered as business.

I disagree, common thing they do is to steal identity from other people. Scammer dont actually use their real information to do illegal things, they prefer to avoid any issues and complications. I dont see any reason for them to use their real identity in a way that they can buy fake identification in the black market which we all know that most of scammers are doing this.

I am one of the victims of Miracle Tele.
they change the rules once a week in 1 month.
this is very suspicious and true, the biggest miracle tele scam in this year.
It is unfortunate that a good project and looks like it can be a real scams.
words of regret always arrive late.

not only that but there are many other similar factors. But I focus on your conversation that what you say is true, everything is always indicative of fraud like video calls or verification of the face of the team & developer. they could be one of the paid members to convince investors that they are real.

Thank you for this candid opinion. I made a similar argument just last week in a crypto group on telegram, the fact that team members do videos or attend crypto summits, blockchain events etc doesn't make them 100% genuine. Some use that to lure in investors, then at the end the project turns out to be scam. This doesn't mean they won't list on exchanges, but they won't keep to their promises. Mostly, their vesting period for tokens allocated to team members will be a big shade of lies, since they keep dumping when buy wall increases at any favorable price. Some team members go ahead to do an MVP with no intention to do an actual product, since their main aim is to scam. Well, most team members who show their real identity most likely are not scam, we just have to be careful.  

It is true that it is their strategy to steal more money from the people, they keep stealing more money even though they are posting and showing their real faces in the public. We cannot just trust their faces and their credentials without more reliable information.

Yes, absolutely right. Showing face of team member on ICO doesn't mean they are legit. Intention of behind real face is the main fact. We really won't able to stop them if they like to skip after fund raising. Live video or live recording won't prevent them if their intention is scam. That's our wrong thought about ICO investment. No one able to read their mind, so we can't believe them with our fund. We have seen previously that scammer even they show their face. So always do your own diligence before put money any ICO. But you should not forget that fake face is more dangerous than real face. Fake team means we already aware about their intention.

this often happens by parties who are not responsible for being able to attract the attention of many people so they can ensure that the project they are doing is real because it shows photos, videos or seminars. However, all that must have been planned as well as possible, they were able to create a fake team to be able to convince many people and be able to take the opportunity after obtaining some money from the many people who invested in it.

So its all about try your luck, showing faces on videos doesn't give any facts about been legit or not, now all that is left is to do your best and leave the rest, no matter how good you are you can still easily fall for scam projects

Yes, I strongly agree with your opinion, not necessarily projects that want to show the face of CEO and other teams on the website have potential legit, they can just steal people's photos and then change their profession to become a CEO or other developer or be called a fake team, we must do search whether it's all true and not steal other people's photos to be used as fraudulent material.

what can be done is to look at the partners or the advisors of the project and see if they are the ones really what is shown in the pages of the project. most of the time they are not telling what is the truth. i have talked to known advisor of projects, but he isn't actually listed to the webpage of the team. he is sort of the ghost and the team claimed well known advisor that is a member of a well known exchange. and i guess this well known advisors shall be contact to verify to see if the project is real.

Good teams will show face to the public and bad teams or scam teams will do the same as well, here is a fact, you still need your research to decide on which project to invest in, crypto is all about risk investments and if you are lucky to can make better cash

More and more often I realize that no one is conducting any research. people still invest in all projects in a row. they play in the casino and then complain that they have lost their money. nobody wants to think

If you're an investor and you've invested $500 will you go an extra mile and more funds to spare, to go after these scammers, will you bother yourself to go the developer's country just to sue them, you will, if you invested hundreds thousands of dollars but there are few investors now willing to invest hundreds thousands dollars for one project, because of the possibility of scam is very high compare to 2016 and 2017.

of course its still can,that is no reason to make a project look like it is not a scam, for example ,
if u know project such as keplertek , then sparkster , they showing the real their face on video,telegram,social media,but well, they still scamming people.

Usually people with nothing to lose either someone having a poor background or just straight retarded. Some people are just insane enough to don't care whether their face will appear on so many websites as a scammer. How they usually dont give even a single shit about that usually fascinates me, how can someone could have no shame I mean. However, most of people from developed country more specifically with good education background like graduating from prestige university usually will have too much to lose to do that so that;s why it's always important to look after their curriculum vitae or LinkedIn profile even further.

Well, there is no difference in real life. everyone will sure to scam you even they reveal there own face and identity. they are have many reason hidden in back of their face to scam you. if you let them scam you. you are to only one responsible for that. no one will scam if you have knowledge to fight them back. just be reminded that all users in crypto have their own greediness.

I have the same sentiment on that because I have personally witnessed one blockchain project with publicly known team members and unfortunately I know them in personal level. Long story short, it turned out the project becomes dead. So you will ask to yourself, where did the money goes? How about the investment of those institutions that believed on them? Are they going to return it? I seriously doubt they will return the money collected. So how can they live their everyday lives that everyone knows they pocketed the money. I think they have no shame at all as you said.

I think they will not return investor money. They have paid themselves a very high salary just to spend investor money. In addition, they have already spent investors' money on various meetings that have no results or can be called a vacation

100% sure, not necessarily running away your money, there are developers and their team doing a lot of rounds of media and webinars and question and answer and going public speaking but their platform is not viable and they cannot hit the target, so their platform and their roadmap is in Limbo without follow up development, so the price is dipping and they have not done anything, they gave the platform and that's all, this is probably one of the most popular form of scam, they set up and that's it.

Returning the investor's money is impossible in that case. Investors face the risk, they know that it might happen.

The team simply wasn't able to handle their project in the right way. The money they have collected had already been used for the project or maybe just to fund themselves.

That's normal because investor full trustly the project if team member show their identity and face in public, unfortunately investor never know that actually scammer don't care what's the information of them already exposed, it's not only on cryptocurrency, currently it's already have different types of scam around the world, all of them the ultimate goal is money and identity is not important for them.

a lot of trust in a project team has diminished because there are so many projects that end in fraud and many investors are disappointed with what they get in joining the project if you are one of the most trustworthy teams that may be needed by investors to participate in the big project investor expectations if it can be a good and profitable project

You should not rely your trust on the faces that you will see about the team behind the project that you are trying to get into. Scammers don't give a damn about their faces because all they want is the face inside your wallet which is your money. They will do anything just to get that money from your pocket and run away with it. If you are going to invest into something, make sure that you will do a lot of research and do not rely on faces or any flowery words. Give yourself a favor to really dig into the project to see if it is really worth it.

The point is people who reveal their identities even on the internet, they are out of your reach, they might disguise their country, you are different from country to their team and developers, so they are not too worried to deceive you, because you will be a little confused how to catch them, while your distance from them is reaches tens thousands of miles, moreover crypto is still illegal in some countries, so even if you report it to the police they won't take your report seriously. So that's why the team and the developers dare to show their true faces to deceive all of you. Its shame honestly.

You have a good point. All we know the power of money maybe they can hired some to show their faces in public to make it real they pay them in a good price, just to make people believe that they are legit. So be wise don't give your trust and investment quickly. If you want to discover a new project at your own you need to set your limitation,invest the capital as much as you can handle your possible loss.

It's very unusual to see a project to scam their investors even after revealing their true identity. But yes, despite of knowing their identity, it will be easy for them to run the money since they are from the other country. An investor can take a legal action and go after them but it won't be easy and they also have to pay for the expenses for doing that.

It's more so only happens in extreme cases and is definetly more rare then getting scammed by a fake team, or a non-existent team. Bitconnect was an obvious scam with strange team members that where likely not even a part of the team, and Miracle Tele was one of those weird cases where the team just disappeared for no reason...

Keep in mind, anything can end up scamming you and it's always good to have a mindset of never investing what you can't afford to lose.

You do usually have a case of suing or joining a class action lawsuits against someone if their identity is revealed and they scam you - there's a way for you to get your money back if they are stupid enough to run away with it.

Well, let me say this can happen in 5/10 cases. Because a real team with  good reputations showing their real faces on white paper, social pages etc can hardly scam. Reason being that, they wouldn't want to damage their long built reputation and credibility score for anything.

Of course, we don't know whether a person can be trusted or not especially here where we don't personally know everyone. A lot of scammers now are pretending to be someone you can trust. The first thing they will do is to get your trust just to get what they really want. Just because they showed you their faces, doesn't mean you can give your full trust on them.  You don't know if the information they gave you is really true. being cautious is important here if don't want to end up getting scammed.

They do not have right attitude and it is the reason why they deceive some investors. Do not trust some developers even they show their faces in the public. Some of them are scammers and it is part of their plan.

There is no longer any fear for them to be able to fool many people even if they use their original data though. because they have the courage and million to know that the process of prosecution will be difficult so they are very confident and brave to use their photos on the team. somehow I really hate this condition

Nowadays, it is almost impossible to identify scam projects and it does not matter if team members are real, if there is a working product and how much money were raised during the token sale. Even good looking projects are scamming people after a while.

yes, that can happen. but in most cases this only happens to new projects, but that doesn't mean the old projects really guarantee you if they are the original team. the crypto market can easily be made into a manipulation market including the face of the team & project developer, in fact I've heard of other people's funding, I mean someone's face is used as a project team to convince project investors that they are the original project team.

I agree, we cannot really guarantee that a certain project is not a scam. The only advantage we have when they show their faces in their projects is that we can take legal actions if possible and if not, we can now recognize their faces and see if their faces are there in the new project we are going to join. We just need to take precautionary measures next time we join projects cause scams are everywhere nowadays and if we are too careless, we will surely end up wasting our time for nothing.

Some scammers now dont look on their personal identity.
There are so many projects before were scammers and people now are being smart before investing in any projects.
Now scammers needs to go high and needs to do more than what they did before and yes if you are active in seminars and conventions you will get more investors.