At a point the team start given excuses to abide by what they promised to do or stop communicating with the community then I can sense the project is scam. How do you determine a project is gone bad and won't fulfil it promise? What criteria do you use ? or you wait for years thinking all will be well ?
It is a fraud right away if they are faking their platform, their whitepaper and the composition of their team, some of the scam ICO that are caught are faking their team by doing photoshopped of other people and announcing that they are part of the team, when they are not, another thing is when they copy their whitepaper from an existing project.