Most people are all too aware that scammers have been targeting the ICO industry for quite some time now. It seems some criminals are shifting their attention from potential investors to the people organizing these crowdsales. It’s a very peculiar trend, although it seems there is still a lot of work to be done until people actually fall for these scammy tactics.
A Different Breed of ICO Scam
It is somewhat refreshing to see scammers target the ICO industry and not go after investors for a change. Although the latter activity will persist for quite some time, it seems this new trend may prove rather intriguing. Instead of hacking a website, sending out a phishing email, or simply creating a pure scam, the new tactic takes a very different approach.
This screenshot shows how one particular scammer tried to defraud an ICO team. He or she attempted to defraud the ICO’s owner by offering fake advertising services. Although that is not exactly new, it does go to show that people are willing to go to great lengths to defraud ICO teams these days.
This particular individual is known as Kelvin and claims to be part of a marketing team. If there is one thing the cryptocurrency world has no shortage of, it is self-professed marketing gurus. Kelvin’s team purportedly focuses on upcoming ICOs, and they even offer review services of every initial coin offering to give it some more legitimacy – assuming it is legitimate to begin with.
As such, the “company” claims to offer special packages for interviews, which can be as expensive as $2,500. While the prices are negotiable, it is evident there is no reason for anyone to trust this offer whatsoever. After all, there is no website linked, and the scammer just gives out a Bitcoin address to which people can send money.
The person who Kelvin tried to scam quickly saw through these lies and eventually turned this attempt into a major joke. It is quite a valuable lesson for other ICO projects out there, as people will come up with the weirdest of offers these days. Since most projects want instant legitimacy in the hopes of raising a lot of money, it is only normal that some people may fall for this particular approach.
It is evident that the scammer has no clue as to how Bitcoin works, though. His failure to understand what a Trezor is – thinking it was a person – and not even noticing the hidden message in the fake transaction ID only shows how clueless some of these scammers really are. Rest assured we will see a lot more of these attempts in the future, as ICOs will continue to attract all kinds of people moving forward.
