Prodeum fake ICO paid people to write on their bodies for advertising
As if the previous news on the Ethereum-based project Prodeum and its initial coin offering which turned out to be fake was not amusing enough (the scammers exited the business with a bang, leaving a noteworthy message on their website), people still investigating the matter found out that supposed “fans” of this ICO actually were pre-paid models from the service called Fiverr.
“I will write your message on my body”, tells one of the messages on Fiverr, containing the photos of a person who looks exactly identical to one of the supposed supporters of Prodeum. As it has to be reminded here, Prodeum disguised itself as a food tracking blockchain platform, and even during the days of this ICO still on the stage, such a support would look strange.
the internet is a strange place pic.twitter.com/0KmiOFRTm9
— Ryan Mac (@RMac18) January 29, 2018
Prodeum's Telegram channel is still up. One of their latest postings (from Jan. 25) is of one of the photos they hired via Fiverr, which the company posed as an "email from a fan/contributor" pic.twitter.com/seOY6BuOTV
— Ryan Mac (@RMac18) January 29, 2018
Fiverr and also stock photo banks were used by scammers before. Those establishing a fraud scheme always hope that people are either too lazy or too casual to look up photos and verify their authenticity. However, some scam projects do not even bother to look authentic enough, as witnessed by that Bitcoin Platinum fraud created by a teenager in South Korea.