ALL - ATTENTION
THIS HAS BEEN VERIFIED TO BE A SCAM.
IT LOOKS VERY LEGITIMATE. IT IS NOT.
They will not respond to this message. There is your proof if you want.
MODS - PLEASE DO WHATEVER IS NECESSARY. I will post the last hour of their Telegram chat here..which they are in and not responding.
Pft:
Telegram of the team is correct?
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.28957307 i readed a whole article about scam
but don't know if it is true
i trust symm
and i think this article is not true
[9:46:36 AM] Sandro Martins:
All those points deserve a reply:
#219
Conclusion: I did like this ICO at first sight and felt inclined to invest. I did my due diligence and found so many red flags that I won't invest and earmark this ICO as a SCAM, one of the most convincing ones I've seen.
Let me give you a list of red flags that I've built up:
all linkedin team member profiles seem to be rather new, no recommendations present although the got "polished up" quite a bit over the past weeks
names of individuals show nothing when searching the with Google (apart from LinkedIn & their own site). So nobody has a social profile or any other coverage? That's weird for a team that claims so many years of finance & investment experience. The answer I got from Andrew in the Telegram group was: "We are coming from old fashioned, traditional financial institutions, most of us never had or have social profiles, we just don't use them. We avoid SM as much as possible. You can search for any recognized fund manager with German background and you won't find a thing. It's normal. You are welcome to join us in Dallas, TX on Feb 16-18, BTC/ETH Super conference to meet all of us.". Conveniently after round 1 of the ICO closes.
the one time they were supposed to show up, in Dubai (jan 9th 2018, Dubai International Blockchain Summit), but nobody was there. They claimed "we didn't pay on time", really?
if they really are fund managers/investors, they probably have Bloomberg for stock rates etc. Like linkedin, Bloomberg is searchable and no Andrew LEWIN shows up. When a friend asked Andrew about it, he got banned from the Telegram group.
other critical sounds are not welcome: two critical reddit posters got banned from the Telegram channel too
if the team has worked in Zurich (CH) in finances, there is a good chance they had to be registered (like a bankers oath), none of the team members show up:
https://zh.chregister.ch/cr-portal/suche/suche.xhtmlwebsite of symmetry itself is registered through a hosting/DNS lookup protecting construction (Domains by proxy), so is fully anonymous -
https://www.whois.com/whois/symmetry.fundif you look at the code of the website images, they don't have person names but e.g. advisor-2.jpg and team-1.jpg. That feels weird, most other sites I checked had more meaningful filenames like andrew_lewin.jpg etc. That is what this guy spotted too:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.28390839I emailed Polaris Investors AG, the company of the advisor "Mike Henkel". Their quick reply was "We were not aware of the fact that apparently people are using our name on Linkedin. This guy seems to be a fake and does not work with us. Honestly, I would not touch an ICO where a guy claims to be an advisor if he uses firm names randomly". And I got a kind remark that they would short SYMM Smiley.
though connections, EPAM's HR department stated there was no Vladimir Savochkin there
their source code in Github is available, but the person who made the first commit (almost all the code) is gone - no account there anymore, just a name: Waqas Khokhar
https://github.com/symmetryfund/symmetry/commits/masterCheck on the Cayman Islands chamber of commerce for Symmetry Fund: no such company -
http://web.caymanchamber.ky/directory/results.aspx?Keywords=symmetry+fundI haven't seen a photo of the whole team together, which would make sense if it's just a collection of modified stockphotos. You wouldn't start a 4 million USD business without knowing each other, would you?
A friend talked to the lawyer Mykola on Skype. He is real and does consulting for Symmetry, even got paid for it. However: he never saw any papers and never met anybody in person, just gave advice. So again, nobody has seen Andrew & his team.
The fund meter shows 4000+ ETH collected, although only 900+ ETH show in the address where the ETH is sent to. They claim in their Telegram that the rest came in as BTC from early investors, but that's nowhere to be found.
Check the photo under this medium post:
https://medium.com/@irfanmuhammadsyamsularief/investment-with-the-symmetrCommercial register of canton Zurich
Cantonal company search, Commercial register of canton Zurich
Official commercial register information of the Canton of Zürich
y-fund-f5abafde425 -> all advisors have been changed. The full COSS team was there, now it's two/three people that can't be found in real life. From COSS I got back: "I am not an advisor of that ICO and I don't have any link to it."
The advisor named Leah Kronshage was removed from the English site. When asked about it on Telegram, Andrew stated: "he is an impersonator". Weird though, if you switch the language of their site to Korean, Leah is still there...
The team photo would be great, if they are not so shy
[9:51:01 AM] Jim Craddock:
Very interested in Vlad and Andrew's response... as I have a more public platform to take it to
[9:55:00 AM] Stimo McStimo:
+1 I was going to invest yesterday, but these are huge red flags
[9:55:16 AM] Sascha:
same here
[9:55:57 AM] Stimo McStimo:
And they made this telegram channel private yesterday, so no new people can join in
[9:56:03 AM] Pft:
I invested already only 15 ethereum
i have enough so it doens't care me
[9:56:35 AM] Sascha:
good for you :-)
[9:56:45 AM] Pft:
but we will see what the future brings
[9:56:53 AM] Sascha:
So it is
[9:58:34 AM] Pft:
I life near an advisor
https://nl.linkedin.com/in/leah-kronshage-1a95b7152 so can ask if he know Symm
[9:59:53 AM] Stimo McStimo:
So you know Leah in person?
[10:00:40 AM] Sandro Martins:
A private channel to promote an ICO?
[10:00:57 AM] Stimo McStimo:
They closed it a day or so ago
Was public
And I'm wondering whg
Why
[10:01:20 AM] Sascha:
getting stranger
[10:01:21 AM] Stimo McStimo:
Vlad the admin just said sorry for the inconvenience..
[10:01:31 AM] Sandro Martins:
If anybody is waiting for some other clue...
[10:01:50 AM] Stimo McStimo:
> Vlad
> Will available very soon. Sorry for inconvenience
Here is Vlad's response to my question
[10:01:54 AM] Pft:
Forwarded message:
Sandro Martins [9:46 AM]
All those points deserve a reply:
#219
Conclusion: I did like this ICO at first sight and felt inclined to invest. I did my due diligence and found so many red flags that I won't invest and earmark this ICO as a SCAM, one of the most convincing ones I've seen.
Let me give you a list of red flags that I've built up:
all linkedin team member profiles seem to be rather new, no recommendations present although the got "polished up" quite a bit over the past weeks
names of individuals show nothing when searching the with Google (apart from LinkedIn & their own site). So nobody has a social profile or any other coverage? That's weird for a team that claims so many years of finance & investment experience. The answer I got from Andrew in the Telegram group was: "We are coming from old fashioned, traditional financial institutions, most of us never had or have social profiles, we just don't use them. We avoid SM as much as possible. You can search for any recognized fund manager with German background and you won't find a thing. It's normal. You are welcome to join us in Dallas, TX on Feb 16-18, BTC/ETH Super conference to meet all of us.". Conveniently after round 1 of the ICO closes.
the one time they were supposed to show up, in Dubai (jan 9th 2018, Dubai International Blockchain Summit), but nobody was there. They claimed "we didn't pay on time", really?
if they really are fund managers/investors, they probably have Bloomberg for stock rates etc. Like linkedin, Bloomberg is searchable and no Andrew LEWIN shows up. When a friend asked Andrew about it, he got banned from the Telegram group.
other critical sounds are not welcome: two critical reddit posters got banned from the Telegram channel too
if the team has worked in Zurich (CH) in finances, there is a good chance they had to be registered (like a bankers oath), none of the team members show up:
https://zh.chregister.ch/cr-portal/suche/suche.xhtmlwebsite of symmetry itself is registered through a hosting/DNS lookup protecting construction (Domains by proxy), so is fully anonymous -
https://www.whois.com/whois/symmetry.fundif you look at the code of the website images, they don't have person names but e.g. advisor-2.jpg and team-1.jpg. That feels weird, most other sites I checked had more meaningful filenames like andrew_lewin.jpg etc. That is what this guy spotted too:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.28390839I emailed Polaris Investors AG, the company of the advisor "Mike Henkel". Their quick reply was "We were not aware of the fact that apparently people are using our name on Linkedin. This guy seems to be a fake and does not work with us. Honestly, I would not touch an ICO where a guy claims to be an advisor if he uses firm names randomly". And I got a kind remark that they would short SYMM Smiley.
though connections, EPAM's HR department stated there was no Vladimir Savochkin there
their source code in Github is available, but the person who made the first commit (almost all the code) is gone - no account there anymore, just a name: Waqas Khokhar
https://github.com/symmetryfund/symmetry/commits/masterCheck on the Cayman Islands chamber of commerce for Symmetry Fund: no such company -
http://web.caymanchamber.ky/directory/results.aspx?Keywords=symmetry+fundI haven't seen a photo of the whole team together, which would make sense if it's just a collection of modified stockphotos. You wouldn't start a 4 million USD business without knowing each other, would you?
A friend talked to the lawyer Mykola on Skype. He is real and does consulting for Symmetry, even got paid for it. However: he never saw any papers and never met anybody in person, just gave advice. So again, nobody has seen Andrew & his team.
The fund meter shows 4000+ ETH collected, although only 900+ ETH show in the address where the ETH is sent to. They claim in their Telegram that the rest came in as BTC from early investors, but that's nowhere to be found.
Check the photo under this medium post:
https://medium.com/@irfanmuhammadsyamsularief/investment-with-the-symmetrCommercial register of canton Zurich
Cantonal company search, Commercial register of canton Zurich
Official commercial register information of the Canton of Zürich
[10:03:37 AM] Sandro Martins:
Not to mention that daily conversion of crypto in fiat sounds weird
[10:03:21 AM] Jim Craddock:
Well, in internet time, I think the Jig is up. Very disappointing
[10:05:11 AM] Stimo McStimo:
Vlad sees all these messages, but the delay in their response tells me they are very sophisticated scammers
Vlad was online a min ago
[10:04:53 AM] Jim Craddock:
My best guess is Russian scam. I noticed their website originally has come russian in the domain momentarily during a redirect once
[10:05:56 AM] Sandro Martins:
I thank admin for creating this channel, and all those participants. Saved me some ETH
[10:05:39 AM] Jim Craddock:
Will never trade now...they didn't make it far enough. so we are hosed
[10:07:12 AM] Stimo McStimo:
No, Andrew is a real person living in the UK
I mean no, its not a Russian scM
Scam
A UK scam rather
So Andrew is a real person and we have a connection in common
On linked in
[10:08:23 AM] Sandro Martins:
Perhaps real Andrew never heard about Symmetry... who knows
[10:08:29 AM] Stimo McStimo:
Andrew met my friend at a Conference and gave him his card
[10:07:42 AM] Jim Craddock:
yeah should've done better due diligence on my part...no pictures show when google searched...big red flag...stock photos should show up SOMEWHERE
[10:08:50 AM] Stimo McStimo:
And then sent him a linked in request
Looks to me like he was building his linked in profile
And connections
[10:09:16 AM] Pft:
3 Edward St, George Town, Cayman Islands
[10:09:26 AM] Stimo McStimo:
So Andrew is real and he setup symmetey
[10:09:29 AM] Pft:
adress and put money together to send to them
[10:09:32 AM] Stimo McStimo:
Symmetry
[10:08:33 AM] Jim Craddock:
I was about to get my mom invested! doh!
and invest more
[10:09:50 AM] Stimo McStimo:
But their goals are not clear
[10:10:08 AM] Sascha:
yeah i was pretty convinced tooo
[10:10:11 AM] Stimo McStimo:
Very sophisticated I should say
[10:09:23 AM] Jim Craddock:
Damn, the google picture search I should've done that earlier
[10:11:06 AM] Sascha:
could have been so good :-)
[10:11:06 AM] Stimo McStimo:
What's with google pic?
Andrew's also seen our messages!
[10:10:41 AM] Jim Craddock:
if you right click a picture in chrome you can search all the web for it. It should show up SOMEWHERE if it is a common photo of someone..people tend to reuse photos etc
especially profile photos
[10:12:18 AM] Stimo McStimo:
Ha!
[10:12:23 AM] Sandro Martins:
Well, ASTRO is at a good entry point these days. And they are legit
[10:12:28 AM] Stimo McStimo:
We cracked them guys
Hopefully you haven't lost too much
They're going to close this channel soon I suspect
[10:11:44 AM] Jim Craddock:
I write for seeking alpha... they will make for a good article
[10:13:53 AM] Sascha:
Thank you very much for the warning, you saved me.
[10:14:36 AM] Stimo McStimo:
They didn't do too much PR, that let them continue operate without being noticed by experts