Guys, do share your tips on how to identify scams. To widen the knowledge for people who are honestly trying to invest and gain earnings with their hard earn money!
To find out if an ICO is a scam or not, you must first check their team members and verify if they really are the real deal and not just a one-person team who uses other people's picture and information and pretend to be them just to scam.
Next, see if the ICO is transparent when it comes to contribution. You should see the amount they receive from their investors on their main page. This is important for investors and participants as this would provide them a report on how much the ICO had raised from their crowdfunding campaign. If the project, say, hasn't raised enough amount to cover for their soft capital, it is automatic that the contribution of the investors will be returned to them and the ICO will not proceed as planned.
Thirdly, every project must have their smart contract available in a repository, e.g. Github or Sourceforge. Even without a whitepaper if an ICO has their codes and summary set and shown in a repository, then that is enough to testify for their project legitity.
And of course, finally, they should have an escrow for the contribution. Investing in an ICO is a risky venture, however, the risk may be minimized if the contributions are handled by a third-party who will create the smart contract to secure the funds for the crowdfunding event.
In summary, an ICO should have an escrow, transparent when it comes to contributions, can be verified, has an available repository, etc. If you do not see or verify any of the above mentioned, then it will be up to your personal discretion if you still want to invest in them or not.