Team Behind $660M ICO In Vietnam Disappears

After raising $660 million from more than 30,000 investors in an initial coin offering (ICO), the team behind Vietnam-based Modern Tech has disappeared. The company ran an ICO for its Pincoin token before rolling out another token dubbed iFan, TechCrunch reported.

The organization had offered bonuses to users who brought others to the platform. While the company had paid those bonuses in cash, the company began paying the bonuses in iFan tokens starting in January.

According to TuoiTreNews, four Vietnamese nationals were behind the company. To attract investors, the team held conferences in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and remote areas of Vietnam. But, last month, they left their offices and disappeared. The organization’s website, however, is still online as of Friday (April 13).

“The PIN Project is about building an online collaborative consumption platform for global community, base [sic] on principles of Sharing Economy, Blockchain Technology, and Crypto Currency,” the organization writes on its site. “Members of the PIN community can perform collaborative investment as well as collaborative consumption to get full benefits from sharing economy model.”

The news comes after LoopX, an investment platform which drew investors in with its trading algorithm, suddenly went offline in February after raising millions from investors in another situation that some are calling an “exit scam.” After a $4.5 million ICO, the organization’s site went dark — as did its social media accounts, The Next Web had reported. Over five token sales in January, investors committed a combined 276 bitcoin and 2,446 Ethereum coins for the organization’s ICO. LoopX had wooed investors by saying they could make a windfall by investing in the organization.

That news came a few months after Confido, the startup that raised $374,477 in an ICO, reportedly disappeared with investors’ money. According to a news report from The Next Web, Confido, which said it was developing a trustless payment network for online shopping, has taken down its website, and its value declined 90 percent after letting investors know that a legal issue will stop development of its project for good.