How to fight against scammers on both sides of ICO campaign

With every passing day ICO market becomes more and more dangerous sphere, where scammers lurk waiting not only for investors, but also for ICO campaign founders. The hype around ICO market brings new opportunities but alongside with scammers, who shade the reputation of the whole market. Unfortunately, the projects that have innovative products and teams ready to deliver on their promises to investors are suffering from the general lack of trust from investors.

Nowadays the ecosystem works in a such that for any ICO to be successful, the team have to dedicate an enormous amount of efforts to build trust among the community members. In such a turbulent market any sign of a doubt from the investor side could cost the startup a fortune if not the future. The ICO founders reveal their personal information and remain open to answer all the investor question no matter what. That comes at a certain cost, because it creates a ground for organized crime to step in. Trust building can take months and one negative PR comment can have even a temporary but a very present negative impact. Giving the limited time during the ICO, startups put themselves at a risk.

There is no surprise that various ICO founders have reported that they have received messages from unknown individuals, who first offered their services to promote the project for a certain fee and then threatened the founders with a negative PR attack. Most of the reported attacks were full of assaults and direct threats to founders. When the extortionists demands were not met, the startups received negative comments on specific forums, on social media and messengers, making the communication with community and actual investors very troublesome.

This December it happened with Zabercoin, the startup developing a real-estate token. Juan Engelbrecht, the CEO of Zabercoin said: “We were recently approached by an individual by the name of Alexander Moyo on Facebook (FB). He threatened us with a bad review on our ICO page if we refuse to pay him for a favorable review. Since Zabercoin is a company with integrity and high morals, his request was declined. “ The rejection caused a heavy campaign against Zabercoin on Facebook and later on other channels, including Twitter and BitCoinTalk.

A bit earlier in October Worldcore, a Prague company that offers the payment solutions, revealed on Bitcointalk forum that their information channels were attacked by extortionists. The initial message also appeared on Facebook with requirement to pay 2 BTC. Worldcore team made printscreens with threats available to public and shared that the attacks were directed personally to the CEO, accompanied with fake screenshots, trying to damage the professional reputation.

Descrow project is not the exception. At the beginning of December, malicious unknown actors addressed the founders of Descrow project with a request to buy out our project. After receiving a negative response, they started threatening our team to fabricate the data about the founders and spread it through the web, as our project “may harm their business”, so they’ll try to damage the process of the Descrow development. Descrow, as a solution to fight scam, disturbs the existing state of things in the crypto market, which currently attracts scammers and allow them to put their fraudulent plans into action.

The amount of such cases of extortion appearing in media proves that the organized groups of criminals are monitoring the startups. In solidarity with other community members, we advise the investors interested in participating in the ICO market to conduct their own due diligence of any project and be aware of the signs of the targeted negative campaigns not to lose an opportunity to invest in a good project.

With Descrow infrastructural solution to eliminate scam, we are inviting you to take part in the creation of the effective instrument to fight fraud and scam. Needless to say, that despite all the attacks on us, we are still open to everyone. Each of us is ready to meet in person and answer your questions. Let’s make the ICO market clear, transparent and fair together!

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