The latest scam ICO to surface has taken phishing to a new level of both brazenness and, perhaps, sloppiness.
The fact that Miroskii.com is a fraud may never have surfaced if it was not for one very obvious flaw: the site includes a photograph of Hollywood actor Ryan Gosling which it is trying to pass off as its alleged graphic designer, Kevin Belanger.
Once the suspicious photograph was mentioned on Twitter and Reddit, it didn’t take long for the crypto community to realise that the entire team’s photos belonged to completely different people.
Of course, none of the team members are on LinkedIn or Twitter either, because they don’t exist.
The website, which was still online at the time of writing, claims that the alleged Miroskii platform represents a new decentralised model for banking services. While the white-paper is described as ‘coming soon’, the site claims the ICO has already raised $833,000 of $13 million.
The example demonstrates how easy it is to mount an apparent ICO project. It also shows how easy it is to spot a fraud. A reverse image search on Google takes seconds, and should immediately identify the real name behind a face.
Team members should also be visible on LinkedIn or Twitter and have an established network and profile history. Unfortunately, not all scams are this easy to spot, and they are likely to become more sophisticated with time.
Investors are reminded of the need to double-check and triple-check the credentials of the team behind an ICO project before proceeding to invest. One useful approach, adopted by many regular investors in the ICO community, is to start with the assumption that an ICO is a fraud, and then work towards disproving the theory.
