ICOs have seemed to become more regulated recently in order to crack down on all the fraud that was occuring around last November-January, but the exit scams haven't stopped. The most recent scam happened earlier this month between ACChain, Puyin, and BioLifeChain (the China-based Shenzhen Puyin Blockchain Group) to the tune of approximately $60 million or 10,000 Bitcoins. It has been difficult for me to dig up tons of information on these coins because I get a warning when I try to visit any of these websites, but from what I can tell ACChain was trying to link their token ACChain to other tokens in order to create faster and more secure transactions. But since this was a scam I'm not reading much more about it. And you have to be careful when you invest because when an ICO raises this much money in just a few days or weeks it could take away nearly all of their incentive to come out with a real product.
Also, back in June there was an exit scam from a company called Block Broker, which was an ICO that was trying to raise money in order to prevent ICO fraud, and they just ran away with $3 million. There have been several other ICO scams that try to appear legitimate, and there was an ICO exit scam for Elektra coin last November that was clearly trying to make money off the fact that Electra coin is a real coin. However, Electra coin never had an ICO.
One of the more blatant ICO scams out there involved a picture of an experienced graphic designer called Kevin Belanger, no wait a second! That's Ryan Gosling. The creator of the Miroskii ICO still managed to make off with approximately $800,000+ before he shut the website down. Of course, there are other reasons why the Miroskii ICO should have sent off red flags including the fact that Miroskii had supposedly made deals with Visa, Mastercard, and American Express as well as several others. Securing a partnership with even one of these card companies would have been an impressive feat.
Anyways, this article is not intended to stop you from investing in any ICOs but I hope you take an extra second to think about whether you should invest before making a decision. Plex coin and OneCoin are also well-known exit scams. Feel free to share an ICO exit scam below. Thanks!