A cryptocurrency CEO bragged that he ran off with $50 million -- but after a journalist tracked him down in Egypt, he said it was just a joke

• A German cryptocurrency startup called Savedroid vanished from the web on Wednesday, leaving behind a “South Park” meme which said: “Aannd it’s gone.”
• Savedroid’s founder tweeted out a beachside photo not long after, leading investors to believe that he had absconded with their money.
• Adam Selene, a cryptocurrency journalist, decided to track Savedroid’s founder down using clues from the photo he had tweeted.
• Savedroid’s founder then said the supposed scam was a publicity stunt to call attention to a serious issue.

The website of Frankfurt-based cryptocurrency startup Savedroid, which is said to have raised $US50 million in funding from its initial coin offering (ICO) in recent months, went down on Wednesday, leaving only a single cryptic South Park meme in lieu of any actual content

A short while later, the company’s founder Yassin Hankir, tweeted out a photo of himself holding a beer on the beach with the words: “Thanks guys! Over and out…”

Savedroid’s defaced website, its empty offices, and its founder’s tweet, gave Savedroid’s investors reason to believe that they had fallen victim to what has become an increasingly common occurrence in the cryptocurrency world: the dreaded ICO scam, where the creators simply take the money and run.

Savedroid’s stunt felt near-identical to January’s Prodeum debacle, in which cryptocurrency scammers stole the identities of Prodeum’s team, then vanished from the internet. Investors learned of their misfortune when they visited the Prodeum website and were greeted with a blank page bearing a single word. Read more

Zoe Bernard - Business Insider Australia - 20 Apr 2018