Thanks to bootlegneurons to point out some of the weaker spots in my list of Big Red Flags, but it's still a SCAM. Let's assume for a second you're not part of this scammers team, in that case I'd like to thank you for help me improving my skills to find a next scam.
But let me, for the sake of it, point out some flaws in your counter arguments (I won't put a smiley face everywhere, but hope that the irony here is clear)
I could add some more flags, like the Ether that's being sent to the smart contact ending up in a known scammers account. And a community manager that was hired, paid and after that fired because of critical noises. But will save myself the trouble and will ask you what you would need to call this a SCAM, what is "enough evidence"?
But let me, for the sake of it, point out some flaws in your counter arguments (I won't put a smiley face everywhere, but hope that the irony here is clear)
- Official telegram -> "symmetryfund is a SCAM". I was kicked out of the channel, so can't confirm this. But what I did hear was that the admins left the group, so no salty community manager, just rats leaving a sinking ship.
- nitpicking jpeg & anonymous website, who cares? -> I do, I've checked out various ICOs and none of them have this. They don't have to have a fully anonymous website because they are not scammers. It's just more red flags that there's something wrong.
- Medium page suspended and can't find an image? -> check out internet archive or google cache, it's still there. Linking to the other flags, my guess is that the scammers control this account.
- Vlad a speaker? A pity they don't mention him on their site: https://www.bitcoinsuperconference.com/speakers/ , I bet you all the SYMMs I have that I will get feedback from that conference that they don't know any Vlad Savochkin.
- You totally got me on the Cayman Island registry vs Chamber of Commerce, I might consider striking it of my list and getting myself a free account next time. But then, you could have sent my this official paperwork too
: http://loophole4all.com/?id_i=82395&id_e=63594&company=SYMM+LTD. - Andrew Lewin does exits... Thanks for the link to that Financial Services Register. Did you however expand the block at the bottom? That Andrew Lewin has worked for e.g. Royal Bank of Canada and Kleinsworth Benson bank. That is a 100% mismatch with the profile that the "Andrew Lewin" of Symmetry has given, it's a different person.
I could add some more flags, like the Ether that's being sent to the smart contact ending up in a known scammers account. And a community manager that was hired, paid and after that fired because of critical noises. But will save myself the trouble and will ask you what you would need to call this a SCAM, what is "enough evidence"?
Hi all, are we sure this is a scam and not just FUD? There's a few things I find really weird, i.e.:
All that in mind though, I do find the total radio silence from Symmetry Fund on their other social media channels a bit disturbing - but perhaps these channels are all under the control of the same malicious actor?
Has anyone else done any further digging? I personally don't feel like there's enough evidence to conclusively call this as a scam either way yet. I feel like most of the original claims made by rjinsent can be refuted (or ignored) as above.
- Official website's telegram link now directs to a group called "symmetryfund is a SCAM !!!!!" ... seriously? This makes me think it's a salty community manager who has either hacked or had control of the account and has had a falling out. Scammers are not batsh*t crazy and wouldn't advertise the fact that they're scammers.
- Many of the points listed in the original post seem very nitpicky, i.e. registering a website using an anonymisation service is quite common. And the naming of jpegs? who cares?
- The linked medium article now returns a page saying 'suspended'
- I reached out to the organisers for the upcoming conferences mentioned on their site, and have so far had one reply confirming Vlad Savochkin as a speaker at Bitcoin Super Conference
- The linked business search at http://web.caymanchamber.ky/directory/results.aspx?Keywords=symmetry+fund is for the Chamber of Commerce, and is a local business DIRECTORY. not a REGISTRY. I created a free account on the Cayman Islands General Registry (www.ciregistry.gov.ky), and searched for "SYMM LTD" which is the entity mentioned in Symmetry Fund's Terms of Service (accessible through the website's footer). There is a result, but I can't get full details without paying $40 (someone else is more than welcome to though!)
- Andrew Lewin DOES clearly exist - and he was previously registered under the UK's Financial Services Register (https://register.fca.org.uk/ShPo_IndividualDetailsPage?id=003b000000LVd4uAAD). However, he is marked as 'Inactive' - but that could just be explained by a geographic relocation
All that in mind though, I do find the total radio silence from Symmetry Fund on their other social media channels a bit disturbing - but perhaps these channels are all under the control of the same malicious actor?
Has anyone else done any further digging? I personally don't feel like there's enough evidence to conclusively call this as a scam either way yet. I feel like most of the original claims made by rjinsent can be refuted (or ignored) as above.
Conclusion: I did like this ICO at first sight and felt inclined to invest. I did my due diligence and found so many red flags that I won't invest and earmark this ICO as a SCAM, one of the most convincing ones I've seen.
Let me give you a list of red flags that I've built up:
How many more red flags do you need?
My thoughts:
So I'm sorry for the people who gave them their money, you can follow it through their smart contract on the ethereum blockchain: https://etherscan.io/token/0xb54da0854f41396886eb728e0f8082382281f84a . They will probably kick me from the Telegram channel and try to remove this post, but hope I saved you some ETH.
Let me give you a list of red flags that I've built up:
- all linkedin team member profiles seem to be rather new, no recommendations present although the got "polished up" quite a bit over the past weeks
- names of individuals show nothing when searching the with Google (apart from LinkedIn & their own site). So nobody has a social profile or any other coverage? That's weird for a team that claims so many years of finance & investment experience. The answer I got from Andrew in the Telegram group was: "We are coming from old fashioned, traditional financial institutions, most of us never had or have social profiles, we just don't use them. We avoid SM as much as possible. You can search for any recognized fund manager with German background and you won't find a thing. It's normal. You are welcome to join us in Dallas, TX on Feb 16-18, BTC/ETH Super conference to meet all of us.". Conveniently after round 1 of the ICO closes.
- the one time they were supposed to show up, in Dubai (jan 9th 2018, Dubai International Blockchain Summit), but nobody was there. They claimed "we didn't pay on time", really?
- if they really are fund managers/investors, they probably have Bloomberg for stock rates etc. Like linkedin, Bloomberg is searchable and no Andrew LEWIN shows up. When a friend asked Andrew about it, he got banned from the Telegram group.
- other critical sounds are not welcome: two critical reddit posters got banned from the Telegram channel too
- if the team has worked in Zurich (CH) in finances, there is a good chance they had to be registered (like a bankers oath), none of the team members show up: https://zh.chregister.ch/cr-portal/suche/suche.xhtml
- website of symmetry itself is registered through a hosting/DNS lookup protecting construction (Domains by proxy), so is fully anonymous - https://www.whois.com/whois/symmetry.fund
- if you look at the code of the website images, they don't have person names but e.g. advisor-2.jpg and team-1.jpg. That feels weird, most other sites I checked had more meaningful filenames like andrew_lewin.jpg etc. That is what this guy spotted too: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2480514.msg28390839#msg28390839
- I emailed Polaris Investors AG, the company of the advisor "Mike Henkel". Their quick reply was "We were not aware of the fact that apparently people are using our name on Linkedin. This guy seems to be a fake and does not work with us. Honestly, I would not touch an ICO where a guy claims to be an advisor if he uses firm names randomly". And I got a kind remark that they would short SYMM .
- though connections, EPAM's HR department stated there was no Vladimir Savochkin there
- their source code in Github is available, but the person who made the first commit (almost all the code) is gone - no account there anymore, just a name: Waqas Khokhar https://github.com/symmetryfund/symmetry/commits/master
- Check on the Cayman Islands chamber of commerce for Symmetry Fund: no such company - http://web.caymanchamber.ky/directory/results.aspx?Keywords=symmetry+fund
- I haven't seen a photo of the whole team together, which would make sense if it's just a collection of modified stockphotos. You wouldn't start a 4 million USD business without knowing each other, would you?
- A friend talked to the lawyer Mykola on Skype. He is real and does consulting for Symmetry, even got paid for it. However: he never saw any papers and never met anybody in person, just gave advice. So again, nobody has seen Andrew & his team.
- The fund meter shows 4000+ ETH collected, although only 900+ ETH show in the address where the ETH is sent to. They claim in their Telegram that the rest came in as BTC from early investors, but that's nowhere to be found.
- Check the photo under this medium post: https://medium.com/@irfanmuhammadsyamsularief/investment-with-the-symmetry-fund-f5abafde425 -> all advisors have been changed. The full COSS team was there, now it's two/three people that can't be found in real life. From COSS I got back: "I am not an advisor of that ICO and I don't have any link to it."
- The advisor named Leah Kronshage was removed from the English site. When asked about it on Telegram, Andrew stated: "he is an impersonator". Weird though, if you switch the language of their site to Korean, Leah is still there...
How many more red flags do you need?
My thoughts:
- this is a SCAM, set up by a small core group
- nobody has ever seen him/her/them/it in person and people asking questions about that are banned from the Telegram group.
- They really know their business: they show in their website and in the Telegram group quite a bit of knowledge on the crypto world, so are convincing.
- they did hire (and pay) some external parties to make the ICO look more legit, but none of those parties has ever met any of the ICO core team. Examples are Mykola and a guy I talked to that was paid to be a community manager.
- they are getting better as they go, slowly improving their scam game, involving more external people and even paying those external people. That's a good business lesson: you have to spend money to make money.
- They started slow, but as the ICO got picked up by some ICO rating sites and gave them more legitimacy. It's basically only self-confirmation: none of these sites really checked the team members or spoke to anybody in person.
So I'm sorry for the people who gave them their money, you can follow it through their smart contract on the ethereum blockchain: https://etherscan.io/token/0xb54da0854f41396886eb728e0f8082382281f84a . They will probably kick me from the Telegram channel and try to remove this post, but hope I saved you some ETH.