Dear Cryptocurrency Community,
Another scam has been discovered👇🏼
Benebit, one of the ICOs that was quite hyped, has pulled an exit scam taking somewhat $2.7 million of investor funds. Other estimates claim it could be even $4 million 💸
The red light was switch on when it was discovered that the executive team photos had been stolen from a school website🚨
All of these people: John Leverty, Howard Sharp, Ian Livingstone & Victoria Ellison are scammers. Their profiles are fake, just as their project ‼️
The post itself didn't offer proof that Benebit was a scam, and it ended with this:
So please tag anyone that should read this. Share this with others. These people need to be banned, caught and imprisoned.
The "please share this with everyone" plea gave me an uneasy feeling about this post. Was it being posted by an enemy of Benebit, as an attempt to dampen the company's aspects?
Obviously this needed further research. I started at Benebit's LinkedIn page:
Benebit is a disruptive network for the cashback and loyalty market based on blockchain technology. The unbeatable social component of Benebit’s model is professionally designed to meet the highest standards of business/consumer interaction for securely storing and exchanging all kinds of user and brand data for the promotion of discounts, special deals, cashback and loyalty programs.
Benebit simplifies and introduces a new way for businesses and consumers to interact, which drives traffic, increases loyalty and trust, and enhances convenience and security.
Disruptive! Blockchain! "Unbeatable social component!" Coincidentally, I had recently read a Mitch Wagner post that was intentionally buzzword-loaded. So this Benebit description sounded smarmy enough, but didn't necessarily indicate that it was a scam.
Until I found this article on bitcoin.com that corroborated the LinkedIn statement.
Benebit, one of this year’s most hyped ICOs, has pulled an exit scam, making off with a reported $2.7 million of investor funds. Other estimates put the figure as high as $4 million. The fraud only came to light after someone noticed that the team photos had been stolen from a school website. Once this happened, the Benebit team scampered, taking their ill-gotten gains with them. The case is believed to be the largest ICO exit scam to date.
More disturbingly, before the discovery of the school photo "appropriation," everyone thought Benebit was just fine.
The ICO platform had wide support, with over 9,000 Telegram followers and a positive rating on ICO review sites. As soon as the scam surfaced, those sites wasted no time in scrubbing their reviews or updating them to reflect the change of circumstances, despite having previously green-lighted the project.
As late as January 5, publications such as this one were writing about Benebit's plans. And while this particular site noted that its aspirations were "obviously a difficult feat," the article writer assumed that Benebit would still be a going concern a few weeks later.
Could someone have gotten through the hype before the Benebitters ran off with millions? Hard to say. While there are a number of "news outlets" that do nothing more than regurgitate press releases (or now-deleted LinkedIn profiles), even those outlets with questioning journalists might have been stymied by Benebit's act. Startups are justifiably protective of the technology they are developing, so it would be expected that the executives would not be forthcoming about all of the details.
But it would have been nice to meet the executives in person - something that obviously didn't happen.
