it's clearly not a scam, i've seen several people here, on reddit and on the slack confirming they got their rise back...
i've asked someone from the team to look at this claim

in newsletter number 8 they have just stated the following about the support tickets concerning "lost" rise from either the ICO of blockchain swap:


https://ibb.co/n2D5fw

so I don't understand why your 84 (!!) tickets haven't been resolved because that makes no sense... (although people creating that much tickets for the same subject are probably one of the reasons it took so long ...)
The team has gone above and beyond to take care of ALL requests, even from those who hadn't even withdrawn their coins from the ICO yet.

https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@snowpar/why-rise-will-raise-the-bar-for-decentralized-distributed-applications

gives you a bit of history about the project, no idea about your question about justin leaving though ... maybe lokesh can answer that one

what do you mean? it's as active as can be now... they got of to a rough start but have been moving full steam ahead now, check out the newsletters, the recent github activity ( https://github.com/RiseVision/rise-node/pulse) and the update status page on rise.vision website

i agree and I would also love more details but it's the team's choice to not give away too much details untill things are done. There is however a lot more public github activity and a status update page so things are starting to move a lot more.

7th newsletter has been released:

find it and the 6 previous newsletters here : http://rise.vision/index.php/news.

Some great stuff in there about what Rise aims to be :

• not just another me-too crypto-currency
• DLT (distributed ledger technology)
• platform to create decentralised applications
• build SDKs for all popular program languages (Python, JS, C#, Ruby, ...)
• smart contracts
• side-chain / asset token creation

Rise is here to stay and the train is moving now! Don't forget to hop on before it moves to fast

slack is buzzing with activity, approaching 3500 members, newsletter published and announcement on monday!

whoever said this was a scam could not have been more wrong, also, the team has been very busy trying to help people that missed the switch from the old to the new rise get their coins back which is very commendable!
get it while it's still affordable

the team is hiring a developper and a community manager! Get the position while it's hot

https://rise.vision/index.php/team/careers
https://twitter.com/RiseVisionTeam/status/903745918129684480