In terms of a pure rational analysis there is no theft or fraud. Alice sends money to Bob, because she believes she will get something in return. So these are just risk factors. ICO's are an early, simple form of capital investment structures for blockchains. Instead of paying for all developing costs upfront, a project can raise funds (secured via escrow hopefully) and then recoup these with the float of a currency. Potentially there are other ways to pay for developer costs. Its a much better model than what Bitcoin has at the moment (sponsoring through the backdoor).