A short while ago, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched a scam. You must have thought it was perpetrated by conmen who hacked their server and web-site. No. It was the Commission's own doing — and it was done deliberately.
#SEC had a purpose of teaching users how to make smart investments
A bogus ICO named HoweyCoin was set up specifically to teach inexperienced investors to look for scam signs in projects offering people to invest money in #ICO. Fraudsters are no fools; on the contrary, they're very smart. They can sometimes make even experienced investors “swallow the bait” which is why SEC made a decision to launch such an unusual “educational initiative” — completely practice-oriented.
Smart fraudsters can disguise very well
At first sight, HoweyCoin looks like a decent touristic project with an educational web-site than tells you in detail about ICO advantages, represents statistical market data, features a white paper, team information, reviews, etc.
In other words, this web-site has all the information you could find for an honest project. This is why many investors have taken it at its face value and decided to buy tokens, but...
Attention! This is a #scam!
When trying to buy tokens, potential HoweyCoin investors are forwarded to a warning page saying the project is a scam. It also lists the signs that could give it away. These include:
- promises of guaranteed returns;
- involvement of stars in the project;
- statement about tokens to be traded on a SEC-approved exchange;
- capability to buy tokens using a credit card;
- pre-ICO that will most likely end with pump&dump.
All of the above are signs of scam since honest project will never offer such conditions to users.
Owen Donley, Chief Counsel of the SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy, says that fraudsters can quickly build an attractive website and load it up with believable details to lure investors. But any of these sites will always have “red flags” that can immediately give away scam if you know what to look for.
Therefore, be cautious whenever you invest in various ICO's. Most of them are unfortunately scams. On a side note, the SPARTA web-site has no signs of a scam project — our cryptocurrency is an honest project which has a purpose of building new financial relations between people in the entire world, rather than making its developers rich via swindling gullible users.
Therefore, you can easily join #SPARTA and help us build a fair financial system — together, we can do it a lot faster and more efficient!