Bitcoin Forum

Hello,
I am writing on behalf of investors in a particular ICO that i know well. This ICO has failed to deliver a year on, with a barely functional platform and very poor communication from the team (just to give an example, the last medium post made by the team was more than 6 months ago). Not only is there a 24 hour volume of barely a few hundred dollars, the ROI has been over -90%.

Yet the ICO raised millions of dollars before launch. The adviser to the project owns his own company and website, and is fairly public, unlike a lot of the team who may possibly be fake. We also know the admins of the project are involved in illegal activity. The adviser is also suspicious because he advises more than 10 ICOs, a large number of which seem to be scams. So tracking these people could also help with other investigations.

What I request from the community is anyone willing to help us; for example if anyone has access to blockchain analysis software (it is an ERC-20 token if that helps) that could help us link some wallets we know belong to them. In this way we can find out how exactly the ICO millions were spent or at least where they went.

And if anyone wants to do some digging of their own, I will happily provide all the information I have so that we can jointly bring the scammers to justice, or at least provide solid proof of their businesses.
Let me know if you can help, or send a PM if you want to see which ICO this is and see if you can find out anything else.

Thanks so much,
J.Foster


EDIT: Full details:
BITTO ICO, raised 4.5 million.
The first thing that made me suspicious was "Marko Rajevic." Go here: https://icobench.com/ico/bitto-exchange and look for Marko under team.
Then look at this picture here: https://github.com/markorajevic?tab=overview&from=2019-04-01&to=2019-04-17         
Same name, different people.

Then, I talked to investors of Bitto, 99% were convinced it was a scam, if you look up bitto on coingecko you will see the shocking price drop. The idea behind the project was an exchange, a terrible idea, and if you see bittoexchange.com, you will see how badly developed this is.
The last medium post from the team was July 2018. The telegram admins are involved in dodgy things according to my sources.

The supposed CEO of the project is "Nic Shin", only available on linkedin and who knows if he is a real person.
The adviser, Ismail Malik, owns blockchainlab.com and here is his twitter. https://twitter.com/DisrupTiv
I sent him an email before via his company but it has been completely ignored. He advises over 10 ICOs, a number of which are scams: https://icobench.com/u/ismail-malik
He might be one of the key scammers behind this project.

Here are 3 addresses linked to token sale and hopefully which can be used to find out where some of the funds went.
0x7b0B0CeCD750f378A609a8FAa8E231854fe00CD3
0x992B4E3C40557FfdDD482f47f646fEE43cCdF038
0xa101E27f06A97985B925E244111b61560Ecd97DB
If anyone has access to blockchain analysis software this would be very helpful.

Let me know if you can help.

That wasn't the coinstarter ICO perchance? I lost $3,000 in Eth on that and got banned when I questioned their communication. It was a bugger that one because it had all the signals of a good, solid project that was unique and could possibly do well. The team were super communicative at the beginning too.

I've put that 3k down to bad judgement though. I still have my coins.

No unfortunately, although sorry for your loss. There's some stat about the % of ICOs that fail that is particularly alarming. Let me know if you wish to help via PM.

No, no, that was at least two years ago and I was swimming in btc & eth back then. So it wasn't a huge loss. I only give away what I can afford to lose if that makes sense. I think that was also the last ICO I really put anything substantial into.

I think that you need to report this to the local authority in which the company has the legit business registered from there give all the necessary information about the site and the company. Only the local authority can help you with your claims, of course, this will take a lot of years. This past few days there is ICO scam that has its developer being jailed by the local authority that they find guilty for multi-million dollar scams.

It is quite difficult to say its crimes, but you have contributed so much to many others, thank you. As for a scam ICO is a very familiar topic, you should be more careful instead of blaming someone  :D

Meh. If it's shitty, I'll call it out. My $3000 investment now sits in my wallet 2 years later right now worth about $40. I mean what are they realistically going to do? Ban me again? Make my $40 even less? lol. I think they've already fucked me up the arse sideways.

I blame myself for investing in crud, and the ICO for producing shit :)

Lol. That's a fault to yourself to not to sell it anyway once your project you have invested had listed to an exchange.

Dear i do not want to discourage you with your investigations and research about project funds but the reality is that in over a year majority of icos have performed in the similar fashion, i can name you many projects that despite raising decent funds are trading below 10 to 15x the ico price so i do notthink we can do much about it other than waiting for good times to be back.

In 2018 until now many ico are scam (almost 90%). And i think if you want to know fake ICO and real ICO, you must to know the project of the ICO before you invest. And know the team.

Base on your statement, you didn't mentioned what ico project is that pal. Do you have any link for that particular project?
It is shows only for me that you are only telling an story on which has no basic reference. Though, I know there are lot of ico raised a millions of dollar but at least those news have link to find out but yours don't have any? and why you need to keep it a secret here, if you can send it here the link if that is true.

If you want to invest your money on ICO for now, i think you must be patience and dont trust any ICO. Because many ico are scam and not pain for bounty hunter. Thats why many people are not invested more on ICO like me.

Can I send the details to you by message? In particular there is one individual who I wish to talk to, Ismail Malik. https://icobench.com/u/ismail-malik

This kind of thing often happens in ICOs where when they get millions of dollars in profits, they suddenly disappear and the projects they build leave just like that.
I strongly support the desire to track them or at least know where their ICO is now.
let's go back to ICO like 2017 and before.

Maybe you should really share with us about which ICO you are talking. I am sure you'd find other investors in that particular ICO here in the forum so that you can join forces and see what your legal options in your case are.

EDIT: Full details:
BITTO ICO, raised 4.5 million.
The first thing that made me suspicious was "Marko Rajevic." Go here: https://icobench.com/ico/bitto-exchange and look for Marko under team.
Then look at this picture here: https://github.com/markorajevic?tab=overview&from=2019-04-01&to=2019-04-17         
Same name, different people.

Then, I talked to investors of Bitto, 99% were convinced it was a scam, if you look up bitto on coingecko you will see the shocking price drop. The idea behind the project was an exchange, a terrible idea, and if you see bittoexchange.com, you will see how badly developed this is.
The last medium post from the team was July 2018. The telegram admins are involved in dodgy things according to my sources.

The supposed CEO of the project is "Nic Shin", only available on linkedin and who knows if he is a real person.
The adviser, Ismail Malik, owns blockchainlab.com and here is his twitter. https://twitter.com/DisrupTiv
I sent him an email before via his company but it has been completely ignored. He advises over 10 ICOs, a number of which are scams: https://icobench.com/u/ismail-malik
He might be one of the key scammers behind this project.

Here are 3 addresses linked to token sale and hopefully which can be used to find out where some of the funds went.
0x7b0B0CeCD750f378A609a8FAa8E231854fe00CD3
0x992B4E3C40557FfdDD482f47f646fEE43cCdF038
0xa101E27f06A97985B925E244111b61560Ecd97DB
If anyone has access to blockchain analysis software this would be very helpful.

Let me know if you can help.

Just to clarify, I did not invest in this ICO.

And I have updated the original post with details

Let me know if you can help.

I think the best help can be gotten on the scam accusation board of the forum
Help is readily there

It’s normal for pictures and team members to be cloned and fake
And it’s a thumb up for you noticing then

I know it is very difficult to know when an ICO is a scam or not, but I tell you that there is always a way to find out. First of all,  if the team behind the project don't have anything to hide, then they should do weekly Webinar with their investors telling them about how the project works and also answering questions that would be passed on to them, but many ICO in existence this days don't do this because they don't have good intentions in mind and will never want to release their identity for everyone to see.

I'll second what OluwaTosin10 said, @OP make a topic on Scam accusations (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0) or even Investigations (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=227.0) board.

More people could help you there and get involved in finding additional information. I promise to have a look too.

I really, I believe if you go to the scam accusations section of the forum
You get the required informations regarding scam icos

To be honest, I call it wastage of time if you are trying to track down a scammer. In the world of crypto, you do not have documentation and so you do not have a proof against someone if he has scammed you. Such cases become even more complicated in countries where it is illegal to use crypto and participate in ICO for example in Ecuador. So despite tracking down a scammer, one should not invest in their dubious projects in the first place.

Good Day All,

Please do not condone the behaviour of this Jonathan as he is doing this with malicious intent because we did not agree on his stakes and claims of BITTO when he said he paid and invested in BITTO when we checked he just duplicated another person contribution transaction and claimed it as his.


As he said himself, he did not INVEST in our project. So is he doing this out of goodwill? Stalking our projects progress and then maliciously making false accusations out of goodwill?. . We banned him from telegram because he was constantly making negative comments about our project EVERY single time we shared some positive progress. And he decided to come here to make such accusations. You decide whether his intentions are honourable or not.

Real investors that have invested thousands and hundreds will be hurt from this kind of negative behaviour. If we are indeed a scam, you won't find anything on us including any active progress. So keep the cryptocurrency active with positive projects and not condemn all ICO's. Some of us are legit. And we are the some. So help us stay alive.


We have from time to time showed evidence of progress of our project on t.me/bittoexchangenews .

Our group t.me/bittoexchange is still active. ALL our social media is still active unlike other ICO's that have failed and closed down all their social media platforms to avoid such negative comments from appearing.

We have nothing to hide. Kindly search on all our social media accounts listed here http://www.bittoexchange.com/. Please be patient as it is not a delay that we can control on our end. We aim to be a licensed exchange, although it is taking us a bit of time to get there, we are certain it will be worth being a licensed entity within a handful of exchanges against thousands of unlicensed exchange that will slowly die out.

Do not post unnecessary negative comments that will hurt real investors with real assets and investments in BITTO project. We thank you for your patience & support.

sorry friend, this will be a difficult situation and I think to break through their address, it will be difficult. if indeed during the last 6 months there was no communication from the team, chances are they have run away bringing project money from investors. This is unfortunate, it is still prone to occur and in the past year there have been many events like that, but yes. no one can provide a solution to return funds that have already been signed in, or at least there is a small return.