If you want to recognize a scam then you should be ready for spending a little bit more time than you used to be because it needs research so you will be able to find out some information that you can use to help yourself in making a decision for judging an investment and you should be aware of the basic types of scam and one of them is ponzi scheme which is one of the latest used strategy of an investment called bitconnect that stole a lot of people's money.
Scams generally use human greed and ignorance, as well as their desire to make money. In the real sense, what is most horrifying at present is to make use of the concept of digital currency to act as "frivolous even cheating". Therefore, these preventive measures should be taken.
What you're trying to say is they are taking advantage of the situation, since a lot of people in the cryptocurrency world wants to make money they see it as an opportunity to gain money for their selves. I guess it is really hard now a days to identify which is a scam especially when we are dealing with digital currencies since it is working digitally we can never be sure of anything, we just need to be careful and do a lot of research to prevent this from happening.