Crypto Fraud and failures

[Buckey]

VANBEX scam - Every day at least one story
https://www.coindesk.com/police-freeze-bank-accounts-seize-luxury-cars-in-probe-of-22-million-ico-promoter-vanbex

Canadian police have frozen assets owned by the founders of blockchain services company Vanbex, as part of a fraud investigation into a 2017 initial coin offering (ICO) that raised $22 million.

According to court documents obtained by CoinDesk, the company, led by Kevin Hobbs and Lisa Cheng, raised $30 million CAD (about $22 million) worth of fiat and cryptocurrency through the sale of a token called FUEL.

Vanbex told investors that the token would be usable in a forthcoming smart contract system called Etherparty, and that “the value of the FUEL token would increase dramatically,” says the civil forfeiture action filed in the Supreme Court of British Columbia.

However, Vanbex “developed no usable products” and Hobbs and Cheng “did not intend to develop the products they were marketing but rather [acted] with [the] intention to misappropriate the corporately invested funds raised for their own personal benefit,” according to a filing by the director of civil forfeiture at Canada’s Ministry of Attorney General.

“FUEL tokens became virtually worthless in dollar value while not being capable of use in the non-existent smart contracts system or for any product or service other than a cryptocurrency coin creating service called Rocket,” which was different than what the purchasers were promised, the director claimed.

No criminal charges have been filed so far, and when reached by CoinDesk on Sunday evening, Cheng and Hobbs denied the fraud charges and said Vanbex is cooperating with the investigation.

But in response to the government’s application, Justice J.A. Power on March 14 authorized the government to seize the founders’ two Land Rovers; ordered Bank of Montreal to freeze Hobbs’ two accounts there containing slightly less than $1 million; and ordered him and Cheng not to sell, borrow against or damage their Vancouver condominium for at least 30 days, court papers show.

Vanbex’s response