Keeping up with the Crypto scam projects and how to spot one

There have been a number of sketchy Crypto projects launched in the past couple of years. Most notably was the infamous and now something of a meme for other fake scam coins, Bitconnect which was outed as a scam in 2017. Several members behind the Ponzi scheme were caught and prosecuted but Bitconnect is not the last of the crypto scam projects that now litter this growing industry.

Fast forward to 2018, we saw another dubious project making big promises and even created a crowdfunding campaign to fleece its supporters of funds, which went into paying Pornhub for an advertising campaign but nowhere was it stated that Verge formed a partnership with them. The funds were used exclusively for the ad. This is a clear example of some shady characters being dishonest to crypto coin holders about what they were actually using the funds for. What Pornhub actually does for Verge, is accept their coin, XVG for payment on their website, nothing more. It remains to be seen what Verge are planning next but have remained relatively silent since.

Last year also saw a ridiculous rise in ICOs (Initial Coin Offering) flooding the market. How does one know if they are legitimate or not? Every potential investor needs to proceed with caution. If the claims being made look or sound ridiculous, If team members lack expertise and genuine credentials, if something looks too good to be true, then do not put your money into something which in all likelihood is nothing more than a pump and dump scam or worse. It is no good becoming wise after the event, because the stakes are too high and you stand to lose a fortune.

One project that has a huge question mark over it at the moment is one coming out of Singapore by the name of Odyssey (OCN) it is run by Chinese national Shi Yi who has a very shady past in terms of his business ethics and achievements.

You can read more about his use of shell companies listed in offshore territories, lying about the origins of some of the businesses he runs and his entrance into the world of crypto with Odyssey and other ICOs

https://obikerefund.livejournal.com/341.html

Shi Yi has since gone on to create Content Neutrality Network (CNN) And DatX. He was also behind another called Sphere Pay (SAY) which folded at the first hurdle. He claims to be just an investor or advisor in these projects but evidence points to the contrary, see above article for a breakdown on the capacity in which he is a part of these projects.

My focus right now is on Odyssey, as it has demonstrated some very shady and suspect activity over the past six months. After much fanfare and talk about the sharing economy, there is little real progress coming from this project apart from various schemes, team member disappearances, lack of any real development and possible market manipulation to boost up their coin price. They have also removed the team page from their web site and nobody is taking responsibility or liability for the project. That's obviously concerning as clarity and communication are of utmost importance, to maintain credibility as a legitimate enterprise.

Odyssey coin holders have spent the past four or five months having to deal with a broken wallet app which now appears to be defunct and no longer being developed or updated, zero communication from a support team that barely appears to exist and constant changes to their 'roadmap' which may as well not exist at this point.

Odyssey have shape-shifted several times over the past year and are still doing so. Their latest addition is the creation of yet another coin (OCT) to add to the two they already have (OCP and OCN) which do not have any utilisation or any plan for how they will be used, however it appears to be an attempt to hook more investors in and then continue to manipulate prices.

Worst of all Odyssey continue to claim they have a partnership with Justin Sun's Tron Foundation but have seen no evidence that a partnership exists in an official capacity. There has been no mention of Odyssey by Justin since he left as an advisor and there is no literature listing Odyssey as a partner. I have tried to reach out to Justin on social media for him to confirm that Odyssey are a partner several times but he has failed to comment and confirm this is the case. Creating a coin on the Tron Network does not make one a partner, this seems to be how they are selling the idea that they are actually in a partnership with Tron.

Odyssey have also claimed they would be attending the Tron summit that is coming up in mid January but again there was no mention by Tron regarding Odyssey attending the event. An Odyssey Telegram admin is now claiming they were invited (cannot confirm this) and will not be attending due to a scheduling clash - make your own minds up on that one. Surely as a close partner they would be the first name on the sheet? They have been tweeting and hyping up the summit and claiming to be going prior to this revelation, so what's actually going on here?

Update: The same Odyssey telegram admin that claimed the team have scheduling issues as a reason to not attend the Tron summit, has now changed his story to team needing to acquire visas to travel. Again make your own mind up on what you believe is the truth.

Project development wise, there is no data from the testnet which was supposedly released a couple of months ago and also no numbers to confirm there was a buy back of OCN tokens. Everything points to this team using some serious smoke and mirrors to fool people into believing they are genuine, all evidence points to the contrary.

More information on Odyssey and other crypto scams to follow. Make sure to protect yourselves from scams and illegitimate crypto entities that are looking to make a fast buck at your expense.

Update 2: With regards to fake claims of partnerships with third parties, another finding on Odyssey's list of false phantom partnerships, is DotC United Group (A Shi Yi enterprise) being a partner of computing giant IBM. It is a claim made by Avazu Inc (yes another Shi Yi company) Once again there is no reference of a partnership from IBM, so this claim appears to be bogus. Here is the post from the Avazu website blatantly lying about something that does not exist in reality.

More updates to be added as and when there is more information.