The chat with the scammers was hilarious! But what happened next can't be real, we really need some regulations on ICO's.

A few days ago I participated in an ICO that was super swift. In order to avoid gas wars and everything all wallets that were whitelisted had to be prefounded. It might be riskier if you don't trust the team, but ten seconds after the pre-sale started every transaction was processed and I had secured my tokens.

I really can't say if that's the best way of doing it, but seemed good enough.

Hope you can recover your eth my friend!