one of the worst things in Crypto are ICOs. I hate when people tell you DYOR, the research shouldn't be to recognize scams. the idea is to know if you want to invest on an idea of a project.

One thing that is working now is for US ICOs that they need to comply with SEC regulations, so that way at least you can recognize that there's a team behind a project, that you can be sure that they don't have a way to runaway with the money.
2 projects that comply with SEC regulations are:

1.- Property Coin
2.- Blockmedx

and another good way of knowing that the ICOs are real is to go to the binance tool for ICOs they have a great system.