You stated the obvious, but the reason why it was so can easily be tied to people's need to make money fast.

Trying to make money fast is what results in people not been able to take the pain in going through the white paper and business model critically. There is even the need of conducting checks on the projects social media, reaching out to verify the legitimacy of the teams and many more as may have been listed.

With the urge to speed up profitability drive, without the accompanying meticulous approach; Scam projects will keep thriving.

My advice:
Engage in thorough research and fact findings of the projects, to get rid of scam projects.