Magos: An ICO Scam Aftermath
In September, I wrote an article that described how to spot an ICO scam. I used the ICO for Magos to illustrate this, as I believed that it was a indeed a scam.
Since then, I have been vindicated in my assessment of Magos. Let’s find out what happened after the ICO finished. What would a normal scammer do in this situation? If I were scamming, I would shut down my website and take off with the money. In order to prevent tracking using the Ethereum blockchain, I would probably transfer my money into Monero to anonymize the transactions.
What happened to Magos? Well — not quite the above. Let me illustrate.
Exihibit 1: Website
Magos’ website was https://magos.io/ . Currently, this domain forwards to a new website at https://aio.network/ . This new website is pretty barebones. On the main page there is information about the token contract from the Magos ICO. The ‘Performance’ link is dead. The ‘Contact’ link gives an email address, a Facebook account and a Twitter account
Exhibit 2: Facebook & Twitter
The twitter account has the following three tweets:
Hmmm. So the ‘rebranding’ appears to be due to an acquisition. By who? When? There is no further information. Nevertheless, the tokens have been distributed at least.
The Facebook page has gone through a similar rebranding with one comment affirming what we all know Magos (i.e. AIO) is a SCAM
Exhibit 3: Bitcoin Talk
Most ICO projects use Bitcoin talk as a platform to market their ICOs. Magos did not delete their announce post but did make it difficult to find.
Another thread calls out Magos as a scam. This is the reaction after the website ‘rebranding’:
The post above echoes my own thoughts about how odd the situation is. Why didn’t the Magos team simply delete everything and run? Why bother with a rebranding?
Another sad thread questions what happened to the project:
Final Thoughts
I genuinely feel bad for all those that invested in the project. The project managed to raise slightly over its soft cap of 3000 Ether (worth about $1000000). At the same time, the red flags were here, the main being the non-existent Linked-in profiles. Nevertheless, the scam’s outome was uexpected. I do question what the purpose of the ‘rebranding’ is. My prediction is that they will try to hold another ICO with the rebranded entity. But we shall see.