In 2 years in my stay here on bitcointalk I encountered so many scam/fraud projects but I didn't hear one of them get punished. Because most of them have fake info's, fake team, etc. and there is no way to trace it. In the first place as an investor, we need to investigate before investing anything It is our job to review each project legitimacy I think that is everyone doing now that is why ICO is not interesting anymore even legit projects fail because investors are more cretic and careful right now.
It is difficult to punish scammers because there is no clear regulation. In my opinion, members of this forum have actually given warnings by giving signs that a project is a scam but sometimes there are still victims.
That is correct because some people who create thread about the project are newbie account and even thou we report the account about their scam project it cannot do anything since they are not using an upper rank which will not affect the real creator.
Therefore, wr can only make another thread or report this scam project to the admin. And this will make new investor to avoid this scam project and avoid spreading it.
Newbie account status, in my opinion is not related to a scam project because they could have paid people with high ranking to create a thread. All that can be done in this forum is to report a scam so that no more investors enter and be more vigilant. As long as there is no government regulation, I think it is difficult to imprison scammers