Confido Raises $374,000 in ICO, Then Disappears With All the Money

Confido, a startup that promoted itself as a convenient blockchain app for payments and shipment tracking, held an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) from November 6 to 8, 2017. During this period, the company managed to raise $374,000. However, what investors should do now is unclear, as Confido appears to have been a typical scam.

Over the past weekend, users noticed that the Confido website was taken offline without any explanation. Shortly after, all of the project’s social media accounts—including Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Medium—were deleted. A representative of the startup posted a reassuring message on Confido’s subreddit, which is now also closed to the public. In the message, he claimed that the company was facing some legal difficulties but would likely overcome them and continue operating.

A similar message was posted on the project’s Medium blog but was soon deleted. It appears that the message was written by one of the startup’s founders, Joost van Doorn, whose LinkedIn profile and other accounts were also deleted and were likely fake.

The Confido Team

Another project representative admitted honestly on Reddit that he had no idea what was happening with the company. “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on. The removal of the website and all social media accounts was a complete surprise to me,” he wrote.

Before these strange events, Confido’s market capitalization was estimated at $10,000,000. Now, the project’s tokens are virtually worthless.

Representatives of TokenLot, the platform that conducted the ICO on behalf of Confido (TokenLot provides such services to many projects), found themselves in an awkward situation. “Right now, we’re the only remaining online ‘trace,’ so people are trying to contact us and ask questions,” one of TokenLot’s founders told Vice Motherboard journalists by phone. “These scammers turned out to be very good.”