Crypto Victims Flush Away Cash on Deal That’s More UTI Than ICO

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Lithuanian startup Prodeum set out to raise as much as 5,400 Ether (about $6.5 million) in an initial coin offering, ostensibly to revolutionize the agriculture industry and put fruit on the blockchain. That’s not the strange part. Tracking produce could actually be a good use for the technology, and some legit firms are already doing it, so investors can be forgiven for signing up.

But then there’s the name. 

“Prodeum” is spelled almost the same as “Prodium,” a drug that treats urinary-tract infections, which in hindsight seems like a red flag now that the startup has disappeared with its investors’ money and left just one word on its website (it rhymes with “Venus”). 

The site now redirects visitors to a seemingly unrelated Twitter profile. Prodeum’s own Twitter page, a Medium post on its fruit revolution and company fundraising updates on ICO trackers have all been taken down. Meanwhile, viral tweets showing a screen grab of its now minimalist website and Reddit posts on the scam have sprung up.

A press release and a copy of Prodeum’s white paper can still be found online, as can reminders of its not-so-classy marketing strategy of paying women to write “Prodeum.io” across their chests.

It’s unclear how much money Prodeum investors lost. The Ethereum addressshowing fundraising activity was almost empty, though that could just mean it got the funds through other means.

One blog post that claims to be written by the scammer says it only made $3,000 with Prodeum and $50,000 total with two other ICOs, Bitflur and Magnalis. The author asked for forgiveness but advised readers that “all ICOs are scams.”

Source: Bloomberg Business News