Bitcoin Forum

I saw some of the scam busters in the forum talking about taking the case to the court on scam ICOs, my question is, is it really happening.

Can you give me scam ICO that was already taken to the court and teams are being punished?
I know about Centra.. so give me others.

Plex coin, diamond ico, bitconnect,  ReCoin and many more. It's good to see that those scam busters are aware of that and they wanna take the scam ico to the court and i hope that will be happening in the future.
But the problem is how they can deal with the regulation that is always different in many countries.
Let's say when you are located in US and the scammers are coming from abroad and how can you deal with it? i think that the possibility to make a report to the security exchange commission like SEC and that institution will try to create a call for another country to take any action to that scam ico.

Not all of them obviously, the high profile cases when there's lot's of money involved. Envion mining comes in mind for starters. They really should make some hard example cases to scare the people who could try those again.

Envion is the biggest scam project but I did not get the information that the team and their founders received the right sentence (prison), whether this was just to frighten or not, obviously every country has different rules regarding crypto.
But with the punishment that has a deterrent effect, I personally believe the crypto market will get better.

I think only big scam projects are taken to court if its small time projects scammers can easily fly away and thats sad reality. Will never know but its up those victim’s on where they will bring their complaints and charges to bad actors up to what level but maybe some of them just gave up chasing justice.

Yes, usually ico that uses the original profile will be processed. Sometimes it is reportedly not reaching us. But I'm sure someone will report it.
When I searched on Google there were indeed many cases of ico scam imprisoned but there was no mention of the project. Just mention the name of the person, maybe it's the CEO.

If that option was as easy as you are saying, then we would have already done that, right? I am someone who got scammed in the ICO sector. There are millions more like me. But I had no option other than forgetting about my losses and moving on, as taking legal action against these criminals is not very easy. I have closely followed the legal action initiated against similar scammers during 2013-14 period. In none of the cases, an outcome has been achieved. Even the victims of Mt Gox hack of 2014 are still waiting for their compensation.

Some were to good to execute telling they got bankrupt and they can't no longer operate. It will depend on how strict their government in operating crypto projects. If their not very particular in it especially if not many reported them, they don't give it a damn care as they think it is our decision to invest in them that's the risk of investing we do.

Bitter truth, only a few out of thousands scams involving ICO, exchanges and many more out there could be taken to court and that also involves tremendous effort to gather the evidences as well as tracing the scammers which usually flee overseas with the money. Mt Gox I assume is among the massive scam that is attracting the authorities' attention meanwhile there are so many scams out there unrevealed and yeah, there's nothing we can do about it. Taking it to court might not necessarily guarantees reimbursement but instead might just further add to our losses or in other word, not worth it.

Few members already mentioned names but I also Add Centra teach. This coin also scammed their investors.Later the was punished by their government.Also want to add bitgrail,though thia is not coin/token.It's Exchanger.But as far I know after hacking,In Italy the case was running.that's why I can say that Scam Icos really taken to the court.               

those are actually a handful, there are still a lot of scam projects that have been missed, and the crooks are still free. ICOs are an easy form of crowdfunding but there are no clear rules, investors can hardly get their money back if the project is a scam. So protect yourself before expecting law.

Indeed, there has been a lot of ICO blowing on this forum, in fact it often happens that it takes victims to easily run away with investors' money.
I have heard the news that there have been several reports of ICO fraud, but until now I have not found a report about a scamer who has been tried or has been in prison even I have not seen the article, is that just nonsense?
Well, the Centra project also, I think, is not clear whether the CEO is on trial or not.

Yes it happen because some of them are real registered and can be checked the identity of the team behind that ICOs and is good that finally this happen and they will bu judged, i hope investors will recover money from these scams. I also heard the news last week about on ICO dev that has been arrested.

Since ICO was just new and crypto don't much regulated in our government that's why it is so hard for now to sue scammers as they can just run away and it is hard to prove  sometimes how they took our money. And not all investors are taking legal action, some just don't mind and just move on, that's why scammers are confident that they can just easily run away.

they DO end up in court, but the RESULTS are usually more then underwhelming :(
by the time the justice system does its shit, the coins have been stashed, nothing is in FIAT.  Theres nothing to recover, and the criminals just wait for the heat to leave
Sadly, the court system is not setup for cryptocurrencies, and even if scammers are caught, they are NEVER really punished harshly
BUT: if you run a blackmarket website it seems you will get life w/o parole....

If there will be number of victim who will take a stand to sue them, to report and to explain how they got scam,this companies have tendency to be in jail. However it will really depend on what country they are located same with where country the people they get scammed as each countries have different say regarding crypto investment.

The real matter is who will take the responsibility of authority to take the scammer to the court. As, you know these concepts are decentralised and anonymous. The investor who are making investment in the ICO they are the only responsible of their investment so nobody take the legal action. But, some countries are restricted these kind of investment passed the law regarding the cryptocurrency to regulate these. So, only those countries may take the responsibility to take the court.

I heard about Centra also. Have you heard about Titanium? I guess the developers of that scam project were also taken to court and even jailed. I am not sure though. But I've read about that in the news more than a year ago. But the sad truth is that most of these scammers are still around and probably involved in other scam projects again.

Yes, maybe those high profile cases, but majority of scam projects are not taken to the court because we all know that the people behind the project just hides in some country with the money or worst just re invent themselves to try and scam more money out of unsuspecting victims here. I'm not sure about Onecoin though, I haven't seen any latest update about that scam project.

There are ICO's and scam projects that are prosecuted but their number is very small compared to the number of scammers and those who run away with money, one of the reason is, the distance if you are investor from Asia and you invested in a project that is based on Europe you will have to travel and spend your money, and you need more funds to file charges.

We know about scam ICO but I'm sure no one can taken into court because regulation problems. ICO, STO, IEO is free event and there's no guarantee about profit and safety, that's our responsibility. Government still built protection system under cyber crime section that can be hope to solve scam problem. We can make report into law enforcement but they can't do nothing. Let's hope 2020 every government will release more powerful regulation for scam issue, if happen I believe it will bring positive impact into crypto progress in safety side.

That's the hard thing to do if you want to sue, you have to have strong evidence, even if you are a investor with millions of dollars, then I think it needs to be tapped out, even though the cost is very expensive too, but on average now a small investor by a deceptive ICO project becomes difficult too. to sue because it is constrained by costs.
Scamer is currently still on the prowl and difficult to judge because it is difficult to access.

There are scam ICOs that are prosecuted but that's only few of them compared to the total number of ICOs in the market.
Based on what I read way back, there's an article that says 90% of the ICO are scams, so if those will be taken to the court, we won't surely see it growing.

The reason why the scams are increasing is because of the lack of regulation, and only few are paying the consequences of their bad actions so the scammers are still confident to do their thing knowing they can get away with it.

Adding Confido to the list.

Here are some links for references

• https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2017-185-0
• https://www.finder.com.au/the-confirmed-list-of-fake-icos-ponzi-schemes-and-wallets

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What I read mostly is the other way around. These busted ICO scams are the ones threatening the scam busters with lawsuits  ;D

I don't agree that the reason why scams are increasing is because of the lack of regulations. Regulations are not needed when a project turning out a scam is being brought into justice. What is needed are people who are filing cases, good lawyers, a number of witnesses, and so on. Scamming money from people is already a crime everywhere in the world. Regulations are not needed for them to be properly prosecuted and sent to jail. The problem is that these scammers have no cases filed against them in court. They are roaming free. 

There are some that were brought to the court but majority are still free and creating dozens of scam company everyday.  The project were probably accused but the persons behind this project just evading it by moving to other countries that has no strict rule about cryptocurrency and ICOs.

Sad truth about those scammers, most of them are still free and still part of newly created projects though they are not revealing their identities but
they just jumped into another team and work with them as there's nothing happened before. Some might face the trial but most are still free and
still doing the same thing.

There have been few Crypto thefts that landed criminals into jails but for ICO scams I'm not impressed at all, every little info I've gathered around ICO scams are team run away or part of the team are been apprehended but that will be the last thing you will hear

They are able to manipulate the situation that's why they don't suffer the consequences of their actions, which probably means that they are still capable on doing the same mistake. It should be the reason why we have to be cautious before investing, we have to make sure that it's legit, worth it and profitable because we can't easily say their true intention. Particularly these days that scammers are getting wiser, they will look for opportunity to get the benefits they wanted. We can't change the fact that some new projects are made to deceive and take advantage of people so be careful so you'll not end up falling into their tricks. I just hope that karma finally hits them so they will realize how they affect someone's life and turn it into a miserable one, they deserve to be punished.

That's not surprising 'cause even the real life such scam cases are being missed. That is why lots of ICOs are just wandering around fooling people they are full of themselves knowing that they won't be held for such unlawful acts. If laws are going to be in effect with this, it would totally be a different game. So, I agree with you man, be cautious before participating the very least we can do.

The truth is that several regulations and practices are evolving in the cryptocurrency space and scam ICO's are getting the attention of the law Court especially in their countries of origin. Most countries have a laid down law or regulations on fraud and money laundering and this acts could be used to bring scammers to the book.

Many investors lost money on SHOPIN ICO last year and recently I found out that the CEO of this ICO has been charged by SEC with Fraud, It just happen that I also joined the bounty of this project before and paid nothing.
https://www.coindesk.com/sec-charges-shopin-ceo-with-fraud-over-unregistered-42m-ico

I doubt if the numbers are high in terms of scam ICOs that were really brought to court, much less to justice. If there are, only a handful, very tiny fraction compared to the very high incident of scam ICOs. For all we know, scam ICOs are the main reason why the ICO market is now performing terribly.

so far I have not seen the truth. I even participated in a project that has cheated thousands of people after almost half a year. investors and bounty hunters don't get anything at all, and in their official thread, the manager just says sorry because there is one team that ran off with the money. but there is no confirmation that they are entering legal channels. I think crypto hasn't arrived there, even today it's still considered an asset that isn't legal.

I don't think scam ICO projects have been taking to the court because cryptocurrency is untraceable that even the team members of the project shows their identities or information about themselves you are still not sure if it is all real, that is why people who got scam have nothing to do about it.

I don't think that the government will be easy to catch them as I believe they are run away from their place without anybody knows where they are now living. The project was abandoned, the team is also run away, and I don't think that their team is a real person, and maybe they use a fake identity and photo to convince the investors. I think the government will not publicize the scam ICO or the team that has been scam people to the public, and they will punish that team in secret places.

But in the future, there will be many other scam projects with the fake teams that are trying to trick the investor so the scam people can get the investor's money. We need to be careful to invest in one program or project, and it is better to search for more so we can avoid the scam from them.

Here are some projects, pleaser refer below

There are also a lot more court cases but currently this is actually the biggest issue lately.

Well, there are a number of ICO projects who were filled in the court for the attempt to scam the investors and most of them are behind bars currently so it makes us feel more secured. As those projects used their real identity so it made easier to catch those project owners and file a case against them but yet there are thousands of scam projects who have ever revealed their real identity and it makes them anonymous and hard to catch.

Perhaps the same scam ICO owners might be re-launching a number of projects to scam the investors by using a lot of advanced techniques which makes it a lot difficult to catch them and file and case against them. I personally was speculating bitconnect and the owners of that specific project were held in court.

as far as I know, it is only a case regarding centra. these can be brought to court if they have a clear team and location. some cases like centra seem to be related to escaping by bringing in investor money, so the CEO of the centra is known. some ICOs have fake teams so it is difficult to bring them to court, and others are still making developments to this day even though many people doubt the development of the project.

You make me still remember with centra although received from bounty campaign but I made bigger mistake in the world with keep holding centra coin until become scam and delist from binance exchange market, the real problem with centra ICO because the owner look get problem with their country regulation with SEC and make many investor buy with higher price more than $5 each coin but faced with scam coin.

There are many scam ICO's that have been taken in the court but because of lack of regulations of crypto, most of them aren't punished.

Bitconnect is one of the worst scam that ever happened to crypto (I disregarded Mt. Gox because it is not scam but it is bankruptcy) but the creators of this coin are now freely doing whatever they want - in short they didn't receive any punishments. Some scam famous ICO scams are Envion and Centra. There are some but it is not a popular one.

It does require a large enough cost to do so, but for investors who invest in millions of dollars I think they will file a claim against what they have gotten and will report it and try to find evidence they have. But it is indeed difficult to access scammers because some also use false information and not information about themselves so it will be difficult to track these people.

I hope it could be changed. The way the justice system in the crypto space is just so lame. Most ICO projects have slipped from the shackles of the court. If only this could be solved, I think investors will have more assurance and will feel safe, also they could lead to investing more and projects leading in a successful state.

it depends on some factors such as the countries and also maybe the business is legally registered. If you check very well, you will see that most ICO that eventually turn to the scam are not legally registered in the country it claims to be operating from and many of them are not from country like Canada, UK, Australia, and other related countries

Many of the investors who have been victims of scam ICO campaigns have lost their investment because the ico don't have any identity. And even if they report it to the SEC overseas they probably won't do it as well because they have no lead. especially other scam ICOs that fake the registry in sec, so be careful and if you are not sure of the investment to be entered then do not proceed to prevent victimization.

In many courts, it is very difficult to consider such cases. There are such countries, for example, Russia where cryptocurrency does not appear in the legal field at all and it is very difficult to initiate a criminal case and bring to justice under any article.

It is sad to know that they are on the edge of receiving the punishment accordingly but been prevented by lack of regulations thus they could escape from it away. The real case isn't about the scam project but the concrete law that needs to exist in order for this frauds be lessen, at least. Because they knew what nightmare are waiting for them ahead.

Bitcoinect is one of the projects I know. This is the largest scam project in this market and it caused a lot of investors to lose money in the period 2017-2018. And of course they were punished by the laws of the relevant governments. There are still a lot of scam projects in this market and they haven't been brought to court yet, I hope they will one day be legally responsible and we will have some new laws for ICOs and IEO

Yes. This is one that I just recently read as I tread into the history of ICOs.
First here's the link to what I'd read: https://cryptovest.com/news/celebrity-ico-endorsers-taken-to-court-over-alleged-crypto-scam/
I guess there are even celebrities that even support ICOs in crypto (DJ Khaled and Floyd Mayweather mentioned in the article). It is just saddening that investors were also being deceived by these popular celebs.

Some scam ICO projects like Centra, Envion, Plex and of course Bitconnect that raised huge money got the punishment, but that wasn't enough! Most of the scam ICO hasn't gotten any kind of sentences from anywhere! They came, took people's money and no one knows them, totally vanished! I strongly believe these scam ICO ruined the popular sale system in the crypto industry!

I think it is not only the Russian state that prohibits the circulation of cryptocurrency and scamer not only from that country, many countries have legalized to conduct transactions using cryptocurrency but there are still many who do scam, so the legality of cryptocurrency does not provide guarantees to avoid thieves under the guise of ICO or IEO.

Only those who were involved in major scams have been referred to court but still most of the mid level scam projects get away easily as they remain anonymous and hires the entire team through proxies wherein the the management team will be hired on token basis but the culprits will not reveal their identity. I had been approached for something similar in the past.

Im not already aware on what happened to those scams that had been bust up and have been taken to the court yet i read up that there were files and  legal complaints but i do lost track because when ICO market turns out to be shitty i decided not to look back but im pretty aware with that Centra scam which Mayweather is been tagged up with that one.

Some cases have been to court and about cryptocurrencies as well. The most recent one I found is about Telegram with its ICO.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/court-denies-sec-request-to-make-telegram-reveal-ico-bank-records

It's about the SEC requesting the bank records of Telegram for regulatory purposes and making sure that Telegram has abided to the data privacy laws, both foreign and local privacy laws.

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As long as the ICO is a fraud, I think it is being taken into court, especially if there are a lot of affected people.

In the last link below, there's a table where SEC-Crypto cases are listed. Maybe you guys would find it interesting too.

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Some researched links with ICO and court:

https://financefeeds.com/maksim-zaslavskiy-gets-18-month-prison-sentence-ico-fraud/
https://financefeeds.com/sec-reveals-details-plexcoin-ico-scam/
https://qz.com/1720295/after-4b-ico-block-ones-24m-sec-settlement-lets-it-keep-building/

Form of fraud prevention is the main thing that actually has to be done, because there are still many laws in several countries for crypto not yet available. so experiencing problems can not report fraud ico, because the law is not yet available. maybe in a developed country it might be possible, but are they also registered and recognized and the company is clear. this is also a separate obstacle, correct as colleagues above, prevention is the main thing.

If the scam originated from the USA then it is easier to pursue with court cases I think. But if it is outside the USA, I don't think it is that easy as laws are different slightly in other countries.

I bet these cases are vanishingly rare, most people just like to talk about scams and punishment and nobody is trying to do something valuable. And the task is really difficult sometimes, crypto market is like a wild west :)

Yes this is the main issue faced by most of the countries. There are rarely any laws implemented to the decentralized networks and the cryptocurrencies which has made it difficult for the peoples to file a case against such projects. Also another important phenomenon is that the majority of scam ICO's use fake identity which might perhaps make it impossible to ever catch them.

Additionally, they do raise the funds onto some cryptocurrency addresses which are never an easy task to track down so it might keep them anonymous. The most advanced step taken against such projects would be busting them but yet catching the owner of that project would be most difficult task.

even though they tried to bring it to court, it seemed like it also required huge funds. I think that things like this can be brought to justice when it is quite clear who the team behind this is, and whereabouts are known. otherwise, it will certainly require a large fee. This is also done by large investors.

sometimes fraud cases as far as I know are only reported and for court issues it will be difficult to realize because most fraud is done anonymously. and for any report I think it will be difficult to make a detailed report because in the litigation it requires data to reinforce the mistakes made by fraudsters.

Taking these scammers to court by an individual is a huge task as the amount of money you need to spend to fight these scammers will take a huge toll on anyone, i am expecting some government agencies investigating frauds take up these cases. I have not heard anyone taking anyone to court as that is not my area of expertise.

Not yet many scammer developer ICO enjoy much money from their scam ICO project, just with few countries really process the scammer of ICO developer where Centra coin owner ever taken to the court in United State, with other many scam project ICO never heard with their cases with court and looks happy after scam many investor with their ICO project.

That must have been a great scam, probably involving a huge amount and with reputable personalities,  that would actually draw the ears of others and caution them. Country that can take up such to the point of sueing ICO scammer to the court must be the strong ones like China,USA....and must have gathered enough facts to face it. Well, unfortunately centra is a scape goat

It is true that we can take to the court every team that created a scam ICO projects but we cannot put them on jail unless there is already a proper regulation or laws about Cryptocurrency.
As of now, there is always loopholes and possible defense from their side according to the current law.

AriseBank, as example

The FBI has arrested the CEO of cryptocurrency platform AriseBank after he was indicted over an alleged multi-million dollar scam.

The news was announced Wednesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Texas, which states that 30-year-old Jared Rice Sr. tricked hundreds of investors out of over $4 million and has now been charged with three counts of securities fraud and three counts of wire fraud.

Rice allegedly lied to prospective investors, claiming that the firm, which he called the “first decentralized banking platform,” would offer FDIC-insured bank accounts and Visa-linked debit and credit cards, in addition to crypto services based on its own AriseCoin token.

https://www.coindesk.com/fbi-arrests-arisebank-ceo-over-4-million-crypto-fraud

Majority of them are never taken to the court, some of them just have a fake team and a fake address so they may be difficult to trace and be dealt with. However I think some can still be traced by the fund they raised via ICO, while IEO team may be trace with the help of the exchanges the IEO was conducted.

ieo is the same as ico , what if ieo will also use fake profiles ? still exchanges wont have a way to track them  . 

only those who have real teams that went bad are the ones that can be bring on court for appeal . this is sad because most of ico's and ieo's can freely scam how much they wanted to with a minimal risk of being caught  and the sad part is that we havent taken too much action to filter or to stop them  but others are seem to be encouraging more these scammers .

If they are indicted by SEC they might be under investigation while they are also in court. SEC spend so much in investigation before prosecution, this could allow a longer period of court case. Every system is corrupt and I dont think SEC has the kind of integrity we demand. There are case where investors are refunded and case while SEC is settled out of court.

That is the fact. Several times I read news related to reporting and allegations related to ICO fraud, but I rarely found clear results from tracing the case. Either because the system is indeed complicated or because the evidence is less supportive. This looks less transparent. It needs strong support and commitment from the apparatus handling cybersecurity so that the inconvenience can be resolved properly. The hope, investor funds can be returned.

No, very rarely.

This is not because people don't want to, but because of the cumbersome protocols that are involved especially with international cases such as ICOs, since most ICOs are incorporated overseas or not regulated by any entity whatsoever.

Also, a lot of the times a scam ICO can't be judged from face value. Perhaps the team simply abandoned development, but there is no proof that they're a scam since there is no legally binding contract saying that they need to further development in the future after ICO is over.

Actually even if the project is not scam but registered under real name even than most of the ICO projects were held in court as using the blockchain/etherum network to develop and fund rise for the firms in not yet considered legal in most of the countries so they might never support the ICO sales. ICO sales were meant to boost the startup and convert it into a working individual firm supported by a number of investors participating in the sales.

But, a number of scam projects participated into such sales which really made it difficult to identify a real and a scam project. This made a lot of investors lose their capital and most of them already might have filed a case against those scam projects which also made some of them being caught and are now facing the punishment.

Unless the existing laws of the country can be applied to a person or the group, and their identities have been identified and the victims and witnesses file complain, many scammers can run away. That's why, it is important to know all the fundamentals of the project and its team so that when things go sideways, they can be held accountable.

It is generally difficult to know who is behind the ICO projects because they are very anonymous and cannot know exactly what will happen when the project ends. I think no one has the right to arrest them because before investing you take all risks so when investing in this market, you need to be more careful. For me, I will stay away from ICO because most of these projects are scams.

The biggest I know so far is Envion and Bitconnect. I've seen Envion marketing during their ICO and there had been a conflict between management and one of them stole the funds. It seems legal actions were taken and they are trying to make a refund, but it has been a few years now.

It's very rare for a scam projects in ICO to get taken to the court because how will they get caught or get punished if you really don't know their real identity and location, that is why people who are a victim of these scam projects they don't have any choice but to do nothing and let it all go.

ICOs are cheating us, I have stopped playing with ICOs for half a year because I have also been a victim of it. I recommend you use it like me

right now the ICO must go to court immediately because if not handled there will be many more people being scammed by the ICO. We don't have to wait any longer.  >:(

Is it really unbelievable that what you're saying is true? Is the ICO scam? Please verify the information as accurately as possible. I am very confused because of this.

I really wonder how about the decentralized ICO's or those that have team members that are anonymous, because for this reason, they couldn't possible be convicted when committed scam or fraud online, and will just continue doing these things with different name or kind of platform they will implement in the future. But if possible, ICO's should be regulated even further to have punishment for them to be limited to just provide legit services to people.

There are a number of cases that have been brought to justice, and I feel that something like this must exist in order to have a deterrent effect, but unfortunately this is not evenly distributed, where small cases are not heeded and easily disappear. In the future, hopefully there will be a legal follow-up on the scamm project so that they will be deterred and we will not regret it in the future.

It then usually depends on each of the country. If the scam busters are from the same country of the project original country than it would be easy for them to file a case against such scam projects but it would be slightly difficult if the project is been operated over the nation boundaries but it is not impossible.

There are a lot of trusted scam busters who are actively fighting scam projects and if there are huge cases for the same project than anyone of them might take it seriously and can easily file a case against the project which would make the project stand in court for an contempt to scam the investors. This is actively making the markets cleaner and scam free.

There are cases, which have been taken to court as mentioned by members in this thread.
However, I don’t think you can do much to scam ICO that’s coming from country where regulations are fragile (let’s not name such countries). Most ICOs are anonymous and there is no physical presence of the project. In those cases it’s not possible to take them to court. It’s because of this reason many central governments have issued advisories regarding investment in ICOs.

Some countries were arrested individuals for cheating people in millions in the name of new crypto projects so yes this is really happening but in decentralized world of crypto creator doesn't have to give original identity so they can hide anywhere and make millions without getting caught.

Not publish maybe with scam ICO taken to the court and we don't know about developer project scam ICO, without report by some investor impossible to make developer get taken by police men, many scam ICO have success with raise much money from investor and every year always have new scam ICO but they can make new scam ICO in the next time by using fake account.

Cases like that are really complex, since it requires the cooperation of many countries but most likely the country in which the ico was registered will be the place where the trial will have to take place, but if the ico was not registered anywhere and you do not have the names of the scammers it is going to be a real struggle to get those people to justice and most likely those that invested in those coins are never going to see their money again.

No, that is for sure. because when you buy a project token, you're putting your money in their wallet, and there's no commitment contract here. Investing in IEO or ICO are all very risky investments, we are not protected by the law and so more and more fraudulent projects are born. So from now on you have to learn how to protect yourself, investing only in projects that are intended to be listed on major exchanges like Binance, MXC, Okex. Those are really projects worth investing in.

I don't know if you'd count Bitconnect, but that is one.

There is really a lack of accountability when it comes to ICO investments in the cryptospace, though. A lot of scam ICO operators don't face legal repercussions ever because of the fact that they have disguised their tracks and registered their operations in some obscure country outside of investors' jurisdictions or simply not be regulated by anyone.

Ponzi ICOs like Bitconnect do get taken to court because of the sheer amount of affiliates that are public figures, like Trevon James.

But to ask in regard with Bitconnect, does someone know what is the update on the ongoing case?

https://www.coindesk.com/new-bitconnect-lawsuit-combines-previous-efforts-against-crypto-scam

Most of the time, because of the long journey of hearing and discussions, those who are initially involved in complaining the project tend to stop their support because of the resources needed without the assurance of getting it back. It would take years before a decision is made in this kind of case.

Past ICO projects are unclear but very few are taken to court because most of these projects are anonymous and it is difficult to find the project operator. I think it will be difficult for investors to claim damages if they choose to invest in ICO because this is a very risky form of investment and no one can guarantee the future of that project. I have met a lot of scam projects and until now I can't do anything else.

investing in ICOs does have risks, and some projects are still anonymous when they commit fraud so it will be difficult to bring them to court. so whatever investors do, the security they have is in themselves because there is no guarantee of good investment here, anything can happen. good or bad results then investors are fully responsible for the investments they make.

Yes, there have been numerous ICO fraud cases in the past that were requested to be investigated by the victims and brought before the court to receive compensation but with anonymity and fake identity, governments and national agencies really couldn't handle these requests, they even advised early on that these projects were too dangerous to invest, they will not deal when damage occurs. The investigation ended with zero results, frauds in ICO and crypto were impossible to eliminate but fortunately, IEO has been eliminating the weakness of ICO

Not all ICO scammers are got arrested and many of them get away with victims money successfully, honestly I don't see any sign of any incoming regulations for crypto because now focus are on Central banks digital currencies and regulations for exchanges are the only option left, how will regulations work on decentralized coins? I don't think so

Some scam ICOs have been punished by the courts. But there are still many other scam ICOs still active and they haven't been caught yet. I hope the laws of each country can control the situation of ICO scam today. I don't want any investors to lose money investing in fake projects, and these scammers should go to jail for their actions. It is these scammers that caused the ICO to die so quickly, and they made it impossible for successful projects in this market to raise capital.

I think yes but not all of them of course most of the ICO's  that became a scam recently wasn't been able to get to the court I think just major ICO scams who's being involved with a big amount of money are the ones that was taking seriously but it's hard for the government to track them down due to the anonymity of the users and who's behind it, I'm not just sure which court would handle them.  ??? maybe on where the website is based or their business?

Actually not all the scam ICO/projects go to court because we all know that some people out there knows the risk of scam. If they got scammed, they just accept it and not gonna make any movement or action about it. All they do is they check the background of the developers of the project and never gonna invest on their project if those person is included again.

I know a lot of cases that are affected by a scam that is brought to justice and such. But on the other hand, is very difficult to find information about the next case after in court. Very rarely get information, whether they are actually sanctioned or not because of the digital currency evidence is still minimal in hearing by many people. What about you guys?

Most of them are running away and the investors don't have too much power to taking them to the court, except big project which the investors are not a normal person and they could do anything with their money maybe they could find the scammers and taking the to the court. But as i know most of them are running away and make another scam projects

Even the startup or crowdfunding scams hardly can be taken to the court. It's basically the same thing and requires the same solution not to mention that ICO that intend to scam people usually didn't disclose their real information or identity but instead claiming someone else's profile or even worse trying to impersonate peolpe that have nothing to do with the whole ICO things. Maybe in the future we will see the solution to this.

That's why experts keep saying that cryptocurrencies are scam due to this event, and it's hard on our part that if we are victim of scam, some people would just say they already said crypto is a big manipulation ang scam but we keep holding it, meaning to say, we are still doing it despite their warnings. Since this is online transactions, it's hard to prove to the court.

WPP project, a project with wide vision and attracted 60 million dollars and then the comedy of the development team.  When the ICO was completed, they planned to list it on Huobi, Coinbene, even Binance, but it was all a trap for investors to buy into the token.  after a while, they continued to play games and planned to list on the bithumb, then canceled again.  Now the price of the token is almost zero and all their plans have not been achieved even 1. You can check their whitepaper and see what they have done to thousands of investors who have trusted.

WPP is the only one but remember there was a lot of scam project like envion, baanx, tokenpay and many more. A bunch of scam projects already available in the CMC and they are still not yet getting erased by CMC. But none of them have already taken to the court by investors.

Well, I barely being impressed with an  ICO project because unfortunately, the majority of them are scam ( like, 70% ) and in general their tokens are really trash and unprofitable that's why many investors are ignoring these kind of projects, It is  just wasting of time and money regretablly.

Also, these scammers never punished exclusively in real life ecpect banning them in the internet,  that's really disappointe, They always come back through making another small projects with another concept and fake team. We need to be careful from these scammers.