eh? I think you're overestimating their popularity. These guys werent that popular. They started off in Twitter, and even with a spiffy looking website, they just remained there. The same 5-6 Twitter accounts posting the same FortressCrypto advertisements with the same obvious scam jargon every 10-15 mins. It was a poor PR move and actually lost them more followers and potential followers/investors than anything.  These guys were only small-time therefore CoinDesk and other crypto news site most likely didnt even knew they existed. and if they did, they probably quickly realized it was just a scam and ignored it.