We are now in a era where scam devs don't care about anonymity anymore, now they aren't willing to hide their faces, they will come out in the open, throw you some videos on YouTube and still run away with your money, if you are a newbie you need to have the following in mind when researching projects.
1. Visible team members don't mean they are scam free.
2. A audited smart contract project can still scam you.
3. Scammers can spend a lot on their website to make it look attractive just to make you invest your money.
4. High volume on the listed exchange doesn't make a project clean from going scam.
This is more true when it comes to crypto projects. The crypto project owners are earning and collecting a lot of money in the name of crowd funding whether it be ICO or IEO or whatever form.
Even the most trusted projects can scam and the general public will never know about it and they will still think that the project managers are innocent and have no inner hand to engage in a scam. A recent example is the LUNA crisis which was a scam but very few people will realize it.