It sound so easy to say. How can you determine if an ICO is going to be a scam or not. If we all can see an obvious ICO, then I don't think any one will ever loose money in an ICO. Everything is depended on insight, and knowledge about the would be project otherwise it will be difficult to stop them. I have witness and invested in ICO that has all criteria of a good project, team members profile on linkedin seems so powerful. Yet after they took my hardearned ether , no communication, no development and no exchange listing.
You can lose your money in non scam ICO's or obvious shit projects. An example of a bad project but might not necessarily be a scam is the project in your signature right now.
Also, think about coins that seem like securities. Most of these tokens do, and most don't have direct world use cases so they are bad to even promote on this forum.