Scamming is part of life as an investor, look at penny stocks and even established stocks like Enron which turned out to be a giant fraud scheme. I think with crypto there are several markers that you can use as guidelines 1) Does the team have a well thought out white paper? 2) What is the valuation of the coin compared with similar coins, 3) Do they have any product or use case beyond speculation? 4) Does the team make outlandish promises of returns that are not credible? 5) What is the GitHub status and when was the last commit? Or is there no GitHub account? That is a giant red flag if that is the case.