There is no clear defined way on how to find projects that are trust worthy. With Alts there is always risk associated. There are many projects launched with catchy websites, stunning whitepapers but the price of token never went up. Just look at recent example of what TRUMP coin did to investors, it was launched, went up for 2 days and falling down since that. The best we can do with alts is to invest the money and pull out as soon as you are getting good profit, don't greed or wait for long term. There are many examples where an Alt went high but people didn't sold with greed of more profit and once the price fell down it never went up again.
Having known trusted crypto experts that are public about launching the project is a good sign.
Low amount of pre-minted tokens.
Then it's about having faces that seem trustworthy even if they were not known before hand.