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Another Scam ICO? Savedroid Founder Exits with $50M to Chill on a Beach
- seattle_spring 8y ago"A fool and his money"... I have less sympathy for savedroid victims than I do for people that fall for the white van speaker scam.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> There were also claims of a cryptocurrency credit card, but it seems all that is gone now, with the official site displaying a Southpark meme Wow, so it is [1]. [1] https://ico.savedroid.com https://ico.savedroid.com
- IshKebab 8y agoThat is pretty amazingly brazen. If it were me I'd definitely just go silent. Much less risky than "I stole all your money, come at me!"
- arisAlexis 8y agoyes it's because it was a PR stunt, everyone fell for it without thinking rationally.
- andreygrehov 8y agoI'm pretty sure this is just a PR, bet the website will start functioning in a few days.
- iodiniemetra 8y agoYou comment a lot about cryptocurrency and seem to participate in ICOs. While you're trying to rationalize this, you have been scammed. I hope it wasn't for a lot of money but that money probably isn't coming back.
- andreygrehov 8y agoI've never participated in ICOs and I do comment about cryptocurrencies. So what? I'm also not trying to rationalize anything. I _think_ that this is a PR. That's about it. Even if this is a scam, the exit was still hilarious.
- iodiniemetra 8y agoThe stupid and uninformed do not deserve to be victimized.
- andreygrehov 8y agoI didn't say that they deserve to be victimized.
- arkis22 8y agoI personally prefer this Southpark meme for the situation: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9qmczTQG-9g/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9qmczTQG-9g/maxresdefault.jpg
- askafriend 8y agoI know stuff like this shouldn’t bother me relative to all the other stuff worth worrying about, but damn if it isn’t demoralizing. Makes me question why I even bother going into work and put in an honest effort every single day.
- DennisP 8y agoMaybe because you want to live in a first-world country without going to prison for securities fraud.
- cat199 8y ago.. vs a luxury resort in a 2nd world offshore haven or a yacht. ... and this sentence becomes more ambiguous
- RyanZAG 8y agoAgree - your life in a 3rd world country with $50 mil is going to be far better than in a 1st world country. I don't think that one was a good argument. The only good argument is that stealing from people is immoral.
- wbl 8y agoHe'll be extradited.
- KillerRabbitt 8y agoOnly if there's a country willing to prosecute and he's in a country with an extradition treaty.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoOr he ever transits a border crossing or airport and needs to use a passport.
- DennisP 8y agoIf he's really not going to do what he promised, then he'd better be on a beach in a country with no extradition treaty, and planning to stay there forever.
- monocasa 8y agoTo be fair, those countries tend to have nice beaches.
- adventured 8y agoThere's nowhere you can't be pulled out of these days, except for Venezuela and North Korea and you don't want to go there. And if it's China that's after you, they'll plainly kidnap you and return to you to China. Russia will just kill you.
- monocasa 8y agoI mean, we're talking about the US wrt securities fraud. He'll be fine on a Caribbean island. No state actor is going to put out a hit on this guy, he's not worth it.
- adventured 8y agoThe US can pull you out of the Caribbean easily. They have extradition treaties with every country there: Bahamas, Cuba, Grenada, Haiti, Dominica, Jamaica, Trinidad, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Saint Kitts, France, Netherlands, UK Cuba is the best shot there, despite there being an existing treaty. And they may turn you over for the right price (with the Castros gone, it's very likely Cuba is about to be more open for business). The classic case, billionaire banker Allen Stanford: "From king of the Caribbean to penniless in prison" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/sir-allen-stanford/9321282/Allen-Stanford-From-king-of-the-Caribbean-to-penniless-in-prison.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/sir-allen-... US extradition treaties: https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/71600.pdf https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/71600.pdf
- roadbeats 8y agoThe founder pitching his project: https://youtu.be/hBUAVonzKtM https://youtu.be/hBUAVonzKtM
- Hallucinaut 8y agoAmazing. A pitch entirely made of memes...
- bitmapbrother 8y agoYou must be thinking of memecoin. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/memecoin/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/memecoin/
- dguaraglia 8y agoOh man, I remember the old days when r/memeeconomy was just a joke.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dharma1 8y agoThat was cringeworthy
- gesman 8y agoWe clearly need ICO escrow service. "Launching ICO without escrow? GTFO".
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> We clearly need ICO escrow service And contracts and laws and regulators and courts?
- ProAm 8y agoMaybe even banks...
- dumbfounder 8y agoIf only there was some way to create a programmatic contract to control the release of said funds based on investor voting...
- andrewguenther 8y agoI feel like I've seen a system like this before...
- gesman 8y agoEscrow is a about trusted third party to hold assets until both sides approve the transaction. It doesn't need to be bureaucratic entity. It could be anyone trusted by both sides according to agreement.
- vkou 8y agoMaybe even a standardized auditing process, that lets investors verify that funds raised from the public during the ICO are spent responsibly?
- foepys 8y agoEvery damn time I ready about those crypto currencies, I only see people reliving the last 100 years of financial history, just at a much faster pace.
- hbosch 8y agoThis is a form of ICO awareness accelerationism. I'm very cynical about ICO's, so this may be brash, but I automatically consider every ICO to be a scam outright – if they were all this obvious the world would be a much better place, because people would finally stop participating in these ponzi-esque schemes. What this guy's done, if it's true, is no worse than any other ICO who instead uses their funds to buy a house in the bay area and lease an SF office for a couple years and play ping pong until the cash runs out.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> I automatically consider every ICO to be a scam outright Welcome to 1933 [1], when America learned this about unregistered securities. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securities_Act_of_1933 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securities_Act_of_1933
- Sangermaine 8y agoThe cryptocurrency scene has been people relearning why we have all these evil regulations in the first place.
- optimuspaul 8y agoYeah, it's kind of sad and funny to watch. Did they not pay attention in history class? Makes me mad that in the end all their playing "banking history" is probably going to cost me money in some indirect way.
- jessaustin 8y agoDid anyone learn anything about financial regulation in any history (or other) class in any USA public school? I certainly didn't. If we're relying on high school to keep the public solvent, the public's insolvency is no surprise.
- optimuspaul 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- iamleppert 8y agoI’m sure we can just leave the law out of this one and handle it internally? It won’t take long to figure out where this guy has gone, and I do feel very sorry for him. People are already working on it as we speak based on the photos he posted and some other evidence. Life is about to give him a very rude awakening.
- jonknee 8y agoI have to admit it's amusing seeing cryptocurrency true believers slowly start to realize why banks, regulation and the SEC are critical to a functioning system. "There oughta be a law!"
- colechristensen 8y agoA distributed decentralized ledger is a neat and useful thing, but it should be as exciting as a new database–not the social revolution the excitable advocates think it is. When you hear people talking about cryptos what you hear them say is exciting things about libertarian currency and being free of control. What they're actually excited about is money laundering and tax avoidance–foolishly at that. Avoiding government control by using a currency where everyone can easily get the entire transaction log for every exchange is just ridiculous. With really great ops-sec you can _maybe_ achieve it, but it's really easy to slip up and get caught.
- JumpCrisscross 8y agoICO buyers are the new anti-vaxxers. Securities laws protected them so well for so long, they forgot about the virulence with which scams ravaged pre-SEC America.
- Xeoncross 8y agoSince you took a jab, I'll reply. I'm anti-some-vaccines, as they are all different and contain different chemicals or strains. It's like saying someone is "anti-drug", _which one_? Vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe”, according to our government. That is, we know vaccines have serious/deadly side effects, but the ends should justify the means. It's interesting that parents are held responsible if their child is harmed, no one else. That is why vaccines are required to be "properly prepared and marketed, and proper warning is given". https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/09-152.ZD.html https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/09-152.ZD.html
- psyc 8y agoI think there needs to be a place for extra-legal speech, free association, and economic activity. I think crypto is a useful tech to that end. I don’t think it being big and mainstream is sustainable at all, and it’s going to be snuffed out soon enough.
- hartator 8y agoI would expect him to lay low instead of mocking investors via memes and tweets.
- everdev 8y agoHave fun being on the run the rest of your life. Sure, some countries don't have extradition to the US, but politics change. Not to mention some of those countries would not hesitate to blackmail you once they know who you are and how much money you have. I can't imagine growing old and never having remorse for a scam like this.
- JumpCrisscross 8y agoHere's the rub: if we go after this guy, our tax dollars will pay for the pursuit, pay for his extradition, detainment, prosecution and jail time. When people ask "why are my stupid investments your problem," this is why. Unless you're willing to pay a private investigator to hunt down your scammer, you're shifting your burdens on the public.
- almost_usual 8y agoWhen he's caught the fine he'll get will payoff the investigation and more
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> When he's caught the fine he'll get will payoff the investigation and more If he: (1) Is caught; and (2) Has not spent/lost it already. Carrying the burden of those risks? Us, the public.
- almost_usual 8y agoThere will be a larger public burden over time if cases like this go ignored. Setting an example is an effective means of prevention.
- mkolodny 8y agoI think it's worth catching him just for the principle of the matter. Catching him shows that it's not okay to steal money from people by faking an ICO.
- tomc1985 8y agoHow long before the masses identify the airport and that beach? Homeboy is an (edit: rich) idiot.
- bitmapbrother 8y agoIt shouldn't be too long. I'm working on a Visual Basic GUI to zoom into those Arrival and Departure screens to extract any relevant information.
- smoothgrips 8y agoRelevant yt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU
- giarc 8y agohttps://twitter.com/CryptoJago/status/986689741469995008 https://twitter.com/CryptoJago/status/986689741469995008 Beach
- derda 8y agoThe airport board look (unsurprisingly, since they have been based in there) like the ones in Frankfurt.
- ronnier 8y ago> It is believed that the ICO raised around 40 million Euros, or $50 million USD via the token sale How do we know any of this is real? What if the entire thing is fake?
- seanalltogether 8y agoWhere are a lot of the ICO token purchases coming from? Are they all on questionable international exchanges that are trying to avoid regional financial regulations? Are the people trading on those platforms because they have no clear way to cash out currencies in their own country?
- tialaramex 8y agoSt Petersburg lottery. An hour's statistics teaches you that if there's only a P chance of winning, and the amount you win is N your expected outcome is NP so you should definitely consider spending anything less than NP to participate. High risk investments are great if there's a high reward, right? If you stick around for a few more hours they'll warn you that this assessment is... misleading at best if P is very small. But ICO investors aren't waiting that long, got to get in fast.
- ryanlol 8y agohttps://twitter.com/YassinHankir/status/986551967932735488 https://twitter.com/YassinHankir/status/986551967932735488 That's just hilarious.
- andreygrehov 8y agoHaha, that's awesome. This guy is so honest. I wonder if this is just a marketing tactic and the website will start functioning in a few days.
- almost_usual 8y agoPretty brazen tactic, not sure I'd risk my life with a practical joke marketing scheme like this.
- andreygrehov 8y agoWell, I would never risk my life doing wingsuit flying. It doesn't mean people don't do it. I only suggested that this might be a marketing scheme. It could very well be a scam.
- andreygrehov 8y ago5 days later, check the Savedroid ICO website out. As I predicted, the whole thing was faked.
- aresant 8y agoLots of speculation on Twitter that this is a misguided PR stunt. After getting lost in replies found this article of a guy visiting their office today and finding it devoid of any CPUs and founder missed an event yesterday: https://hallofrankfurt.de/savedroid-rekt-or-pr-stunt-a60d19e35ece https://hallofrankfurt.de/savedroid-rekt-or-pr-stunt-a60d19e... Seems so blatant as to be unbelievable!
- walrus01 8y agoI get that people in some other languages want to call a whole computer a CPU, but it's not. A CPU is something you can hold in the palm of your hand.
- freeone3000 8y agoThere weren't any of those there, either.
- ShellfishMeme 8y agoIt's not unusual to have a whole office full of screens and no PC anywhere in sight. Everyone just uses laptops nowadays, which many people take home after work. Then all you have left is desks and screens, and maybe some power adapters.
- buildbuildbuild 8y agoHopefully for investors it is a stunt. Posting a selfie and meme is a recipe for arrest, so to me the brazenness of the founder is a vote towards this being a very insensitive "April fools style" marketing strategy. Time will tell, but they certainly made the top of HN if that was their goal.
- misiti3780 8y agoI would be very surprised if this wasnt a stunt. He posted a picture of an obscure beer (which is apparently Egyptian: https://raseef22.com/en/life/2014/03/16/beers-arab-world/ https://raseef22.com/en/life/2014/03/16/beers-arab-world/) I cant imagine people couldnt thin the list of locations he is at to a small number.
- claudiulodro 8y agoI started a cryptocurrency art project I think could be really interesting[1]. With all these ICO scams and the amount of cryptocurrency marketing spam everywhere it's made it very difficult to get any sort of traction or feedback on anything in this space. Make it possible to quickly get fat stacks of cash in any space and watch the space turn to crap. [1] https://lodro.gallery/lodrocoin/ https://lodro.gallery/lodrocoin/
- busterarm 8y agoSo could you forge the artwork or otherwise use it to transfer to the Lodrocoin to yourself?
- claudiulodro 8y agoI would love someone to try. If someone went to the trouble to accurately reproduce the unique ink application, the unique serial, and an accurate artist signature on an art that would be great validation for the project and would put a Lodrocoin print up there with a desirable fine art piece. :-) Also if you're just leaving your Lodrocoin prints around in plain sight that would be the equivalent of leaving your wallet key taped on a post-it to your monitor. An interesting thing you could try with your art but it's also an interesting property of the art that the art is best "displayed" tucked into a drawer somewhere where nobody can see it.
- segmondy 8y agoI believe that ICOs are a scam, but with how brazen this is, How come no one is suspecting that the guy got hacked?
- iodiniemetra 8y agoThey hacked his office empty and then somehow hacked him onto a flight out of the country? And then they hacked all of his social media accounts and those of the people who worked for him? And then they hacked a new picture of him on a beach holding a beer? Or, he scammed.
- segmondy 8y agoThe article didn't say anything about his office space or people that worked for him. It mentioned twitter and website. If you go far enough through my photos you can find enough pics of me at the airport and the beach holding a drink.
- mratzloff 8y agoThe office has been cleared out.
- superplussed 8y agoWould a scammer really act so brazenly? What purpose what that serve for them?
- Mizza 8y agoSerious question - who's buying all this crap?
- giarc 8y agoI see a ton of people on Facebook talking about how they have everything in "crypto" now. People that probably shouldn't be speculating with their entire savings. It's the old saying that when your cab driver is giving you stock tips, it's time to get out.
- arisAlexis 8y agofirst of all that was a PR stunt. secondly the real danger as someone put it is not having money in crupto while world debt is record high and fiat currencies are going down and Blockchain is a paradigm shift.
- crispyporkbites 8y agoMostly the founders and existing whales buying their own coins. A number of the ICOs are raising millions with only a couple hundred different investors (it’s a little club). Then when the coin is traded on the market the “investors” sell a portion for a massive profit.
- drchaos 8y agoIt is a valid strategy to invest a small amount into a lot of ICOs, hoping that a few will rise very high and therefore make up for the loss of the rest. That's actually more or less what many VCs do, after all. As long as the majority of ICOs is honest, the occasional scam doesn't make much of a difference with that strategy. Investing a lot of money just into one or only a few ICOs is insane, of course.
- ohazi 8y ago"As long as the majority of ICOs is honest" This... doesn't seem true.
- Roritharr 8y agoI've posted this rant on twitter: https://twitter.com/Roritharr/status/986669910192467972 https://twitter.com/Roritharr/status/986669910192467972 As someone that knows both @YassinHankir and @airbone42 personally, while being very skeptical about @savedroidAG , the stories of an Exit Scam just don't add up. #1 The XX Millions is hard to actually get ahold off, its not all in cryptos that are hard to track, a lot of it is in the normal banking system. #2 All of their communication up until this point indicated growth plans for their company. I've even had personal communication with @airbone42 roughly a week ago that indicated that. #3 There is simply no response from anyone associated with the #savedroidico , for an exit scam atleast a few disgruntled employees would have spoken up by now. #4 From all the people I've talked to in the Frankfurt FinTech Scene, it's like the company simply vanished. You can't do this that cleanly with that many people involved and have anyone have a good outcome even if they had access to all the capital. #5 Without wanting to speculate, but I want to atleast put the idea out there: What if this is a case of extortion or (let's pray its not) kidnapping? If find it plausible that we're witnessing the authorities handling the situation with the involved people. #6 The whole PR Coup Scenario is a daft idea. They DON'T need more attention right now. Their product isn't ready yet, from my armchair, they have atleast half a year of development ahead of them before they can deliver anything. Why attention now?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> a lot of it is in the normal banking system Do we know this? (Also, nothing prevents big wires to Belize.) > All of their communication up until this point indicated growth plans Scammers lie. > for an exit scam atleast [sic] a few disgruntled employees would have spoken up by now Not necessarily. After Madoff, employees went dark while they talked to lawyers. > You can't do this that cleanly with that many people involved Pre-SEC America was rife with elaborate investment scams [1]. > What if this is a case of...kidnapping What if it's the Illuminati? Occam's razor. > Without wanting to speculate, but I want to atleast [sic0 put the idea out there This is a bad disclaimer. ... If you lost money in this, I'm sorry. Contact your local precinct and make a police report and then file a complaint with (a) the SEC and (b) your state securities regulator. (If you're in the U.S.) [1] http://www.hiddenmysteries.org/conspiracy/history/usafraud.html http://www.hiddenmysteries.org/conspiracy/history/usafraud.h... Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. If you lost money to securities fraud, speak to a lawyer.
- artellectual 8y agoThe problem with money is too much, too fast, modifies the mindset of the holder. I know very good and smart people who earned money the ‘easy’ way change into douche bags or idiots or sometimes both. This is just another example. To be honest I think he started out honestly with his true mission, not trying to scam anyone, but when he saw all that money in his bank account he probably thought “I guess I made it?” And decided to drop the whole thing. The thing about people like him is, they are usually extremely careless and will eventually lose all that money without too much effort, either he will spend carelessly in gambling, or get caught by the feds, or burn it in some other way. It’s usually always the same story. It doesn’t last. I studied someone who won a lot of money from a gambling business, to people who inherited a lot of money from family, to people who get money from investors without putting in much effort. They all usually end in the same way, they lose it all, and it’s usually because of bad management of wealth. My hypothesis is that when they get money the shortcut way what they don’t get is the management skill that is required for having a lot of wealth. Money is fascinating, in what it does to the mind of the holder. How money reaches the holder, usually determines how long it lasts as well. I’m studying a few more group of people, my hypothesis has not been wrong yet. People who work hard for their money tend to be able to make less go much further. They seem to be much more efficient, and are usually very good at turning 100 into 1000.
- trisimix 8y agoIf someone handed me 100m I'd for sure make a fool of myself. Yeah I'd probably buy myself a masters and a startup, but I'd also probably buy a million dollars in useless tech, and god knows what.
- wnevets 8y ago>I know very good and smart people who earned money the ‘easy’ way change into douche bags or idiots or sometimes both. This is just another example. or they were always douchebags but had to pretend they weren't when they didn't have fuck you money.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoCan you describe any difference between these two scenarios?
- dorfsmay 8y agoHas it been confirmed his twitter and amazon accounts haven't been broken into? Can somebody confirm that first image (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DbDvp9iXkAYaY6s.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DbDvp9iXkAYaY6s.jpg) hasn't been photo-shopped? Those images don't have any exif data, but it looks like twitter's stripping exif info.
- senoroink 8y agoTwitter always scrubs exif data.
- bitmapbrother 8y agoI think that Stella bottle is going to somehow figure into the cause of his demise.
- rdiddly 8y agoPeople who win the lottery have ridiculously high rates of murder, suicide, being crime victims, and being involved in litigation... And they have fewer problems than this guy.
- Dibbles 8y agoI'm starting my own ICO: it's a hitlist platform for scammy ICO-founders.
- microtherion 8y agoDisclaimer: I utterly abhor and condemn this course of action, but… Ironically, that would be one of the few technically plausible use cases for cryptocurrencies, if you implement it along the lines of Jim Bell's notorious essay "Assassination Politics": http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/jimbellap.htm http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/jimbellap.htm
- senoroink 8y agoI legit think this guy has been killed. Why would someone do this? This will likely lead to a witch hunt [1]. [1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/8d8hz2/was_yassin_hankir_savedroid_kidnapped_and_killed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/8d8hz2/was_...
- microtherion 8y agoIf this is indeed an exit scam, the founder did himself no favors by posting south park memes etc. The more interesting case is what would happen if instead, he'd just quietly take his money and go his merry way. It seems to me that it could be quite difficult to charge an ICO founder with a crime: - ICOs do not sell equity in the underlying company. - ICOs are not debt in the underlying company. - An ICO buyer acquires neither a stake in the company, nor a right to interest payments. They acquire a bunch of tradeable integers. As long as they got their integers, and the trading platform still works (which in my limited understanding is not hard to do for Ethereum based coins), what cause of action does a buyer have against the company? Even in cases where there IS a traditional debt or equity relationship, large white collar crimes are often hard to prove. ICO related scams might be all but impossible to prosecute if the principals refrain from spiking the ball, unlike this founder.
- everdev 8y agoLooks like they found him: Movenpick Resort on the Red Sea in El Queseir. Coordinates: 26.155949, 34.244912 https://cryptobriefing.com/find-yassin-hankir-exit-scam-savedroid/ https://cryptobriefing.com/find-yassin-hankir-exit-scam-save...
- dorfsmay 8y agoThey haven't found "him", they found the beach where the pic of the beer bottle was taken. Nobody knows when that pic was taken, by who, and who's hand is holding it.
- bitmapbrother 8y agoHere's a video of someone that showed up at the Savedroid office: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEBp1ASTGR0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEBp1ASTGR0
- techaddict009 8y agoThey are not gone. They just said this to prove the point that ICOs are easy to scam and some structure is needed.
- vldr 8y agoAnd.... it's not gone after all! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5_bwFf_byo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5_bwFf_byo it was a stunt.
- juozasget 8y agoLooks like it was just a really bad PR stunt, more info: https://cryptoticker.io/savedroid-back-online-exit-scam-to-send-a-message/ https://cryptoticker.io/savedroid-back-online-exit-scam-to-s...
- donttrack 8y agoIt was a prank...
- arisAlexis 8y agoit was a PR stunt.amazing how YC hates ICOs with passion
- nembal 8y agoApparently, it was a joke from the founders to teach the ICO community about the possibility of a scam... Basically erasing trust and fueling hatred against themselves what they achieved. Message from the founders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5_bwFf_byo&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5_bwFf_byo&feature=youtu.be