Confido, an Ethereum startup disappeared after scamming people out of $374k

Confido, a startup on the Ethereum platform disappeared from the internet on Sunday after raising $374,000 USD from investors in an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) fundraiser. According to a Reddit user, Confido first reported a legal issues on Medium website on November 19th. Confido also posted an open letter to its community on Medium. The post has since been deleted, but it read:

To our community,

Thanks for always standing by us. We have achieved some incredible things these last two weeks, and the crypto space is beginning to notice us. However, we owe you an apology. Right now, we are in a tight spot, as we are having legal trouble caused by a contract we signed. We signed the contract with assurance from our legal advisor that there was minimal risk and it would not be an issue. I can’t and won’t go into details, but he was wrong. It is a problem.

We are trying our best to fight our way through this. As it currently stands, development has been delayed until a resolution is found. We are honestly not sure how long we will be delayed by, but we’re trying our best to get this behind us as fast as possible.

It is likely that we will be able to find a solution to rectify the situation. However, we cannot assure you with 100% certainty that we will get through this.

This announcement will shock a lot of people, and that’s understandable. I, Joost van Doorn, want to personally apologise for any financial damages this announcement will cause to people. It was never our intention to hurt investors; we didn’t see this coming.

We will keep you guys updated. Please join our announcement channel at https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAENHpUJSHK7jzX6GZg

Regards,

The Confido team.

Despite initially reassuring investors on the Confido subreddit, the team behind Confido have erased their existence.

According to the company subreddit site,  “Confido is a payment solution developed to be used by both businesses and individuals. It provides secure escrow payments using smart contracts, without relying on a third party to control the money. The unique thing about Confido is its shipment tracking feature. Confido will track a package up to the point that it gets delivered, and will only then release the funds. This is all done in a trustless and decentralised fashion using smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.”

The company sold digital tokens to investors over the Ethereum blockchain in an ICO that ran from November 6 to 8. During the token sale, Confido sold people bespoke digital tokens that represent their investment in exchange for ether, Ethereum’s digital currency. While the use cases for cryptocurrencies are still evolving, Ethereum is popular among the tech investors because startups use ICOs to raise huge investments in a very short amount of time.

Confido website is currently down as at the time of writing of this report. The site displays a “Not Found” error message.