Summary:
During the ICO, Storiqa Support personnel claimed there would be no KYC ever. Close to the end of the ICO they created a "token sale policy" document claiming they want KYC details including Social Security Numbers and Passport info from everyone who bought into the ICO. They tried to pass this document off as an agreement everybody had made when buying into the ICO but this document did not even exist until the ICO was almost ended. When confronted about this they produced a older document, but turns out this document was modified as well and therefore proves nothing. Now Storiqa wants to hold all investor money hostage until given personal information. I believe they pulled this Bait and Switch Scam knowing they would not have sold half the tokens they did, had they enforced KYC from the beginning.
In addition to
flat out lying about some of their advisers (who themselves deny being Storiqa advisers), failure to honor referral bonuses and having performed no known customer service....
During Storica's ICO signup there was nothing in the agreement which stated KYC (know your customer) would be required.
Even the admins claimed there was no KYC:
The day after the ICO they announced they would now have KYC and started throwing around this PDF document here:
https://crowdsale.storiqa.com/static/docs/token_sale_policy.pdf"12.1. STORIQA Group maintain a Know-Your-Customer (DzKYCdz) policy, collect and process
information Buyers provide directly to Company when Buyers use our Services. Types of
personal information which Company will collect from Buyers when Buyers visit or use our
online services include your name, nationality, country of residence, postal address,
social
security number, passport data, telephone number(s), e-mail address and other. "
Storiqa is trying to claim KYC was always posted on their site. Here is the "agreement" they keep throwing around:
https://crowdsale.storiqa.com/static/docs/token_sale_policy.pdfHere is another copy in case they take down this document:
https://filebin.ca/3qEEeB10hfIl/token_sale_policy.pdfBut the pdf metadata says otherwise. This PDF was created RIGHT BEFORE THE ICO ENDED (Jan 26).
The document itself states that it was made much earlier than it actually was:
Where was this document linked to the site during the ICO?
This sort of thing is really deceptive because they knew a lot of people would not participate in the ICO had they required KYC when signing up for their site. Instead they elected to surprise everyone after they had taken money. They are literally hodling everybody's money hostage in exchange for all their personal info (including SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS) and have said there will be NO REFUNDS. So for all of you who can't satisfy their requirements of personal info YOU'RE FUCKED.
They have literally zero reason to require this info. First of all it is a utility token, not a security. Secondly, they do not accept fiat payments. Thirdly, they are
RUSSIAN. I could understand this if it were somebody opening an online store but just for buying utility tokens? No way.
I wonder if they can produce a token sale policy that was created before the ICO began?
I wonder if they are registered with the SEC?
Why should anyone give their private identifying info (SSN, Passports, etc) If they themselves cannot be transparent as a company?
If anybody thinks it is safe to give your information to random online people asking for it, think again.......... Criminals use stolen ID selfies to create fake accounts on exchanges to launder money! Do you want to go to prison because your identity was stolen and used to launder money?
I wouldn't be surprised if Storiqa intends to use your information to create fake exchange accounts to use to make even more money selling endless STQ tokens on the open market. Think about it for a second. The KYC info they are asking for (pic of you holding your ID, etc) is the
EXACT SAME THING exchanges ask for! Paranoid? Better safe than sorry!
https://themerkle.com/new-paypal-phishing-site-demands-users-submit-a-selfie-while-holding-an-id-card/https://www.hackread.com/android-malware-selfies-steals-credit-card/https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2018/01/16/netflix-phishing-id/Unfortunately they have managed to prevent caching of their website from archive.org and google so there is no way for them to prove it was there before but just in case they do end up scamming people here is a list of their server IPs.
Storiqa website is hosted in Germany on Amazon servers . They managed to use cloudflare for one of their subdomains but neglected to hide them all. Isn't it a little strange they have a vpn server?
Edit: Added Jan 31
They posted this today:
https://medium.com/@storiqa/four-questions-about-kyc-a75c1ceae05b"We are not going to run away (to Bahamas, for example) with all the money (in that case we would not even need KYC)."... Says the Russian company with their site hosted in Germany hidden behind hashflare and their office in 'Hong Kong'.
When we take a look at their "Hong Kong" office address we find that many businesses are 'headquartered' there:
https://pmccapital.info/https://nklsystem.com/contacthttp://www.lei-lookup.com/#!recordPopup;lei=254900AHSPYG9DNQUA31;
http://firstccss.com/etc, etc
"You can be sure that your personal data will be used only for STQs purchasing confirmation."Yes but the United States government has actively warned it's citizens against giving up their personal information especially to Russians.
"4. Why do I need KYC? I don’t want to share any personal information!
KYC is a defensive mechanism for both the company and the clients. By sharing this data, all the token holders confirm that they are the true owners of their personal accounts and the wallet, to which we send STQ. It will grant that you are the person that receive your tokens."Crypto is by definition SECURITY IN AND OF ITSELF. Why do they need to confirm "true owners" when the wallet itself IS THE IDENTITY OF THE TRUE OWNER? This statement makes literally ZERO SENSE AT ALL. Cryptocurrencies were specifically designed to allow trustless transactions THIS IS WHY WE USE THEM. If they want to know their customer WHY ARE THEY USING CRYPTO TOKENS? Just use fiat! How is this a defensive mechanism used to protect anybody?
So they posted an older document showing the paragraph was indeed in there but there was a typo.
But again, where was this document linked in the site? All they had linked during the ICO was a whitepaper.
archive.org/waybackmachine does not show this document linked anywhere on the site
https://web.archive.org/web/20180121005340/https://crowdsale.storiqa.com/Why did they not apply KYC when users registered? Why did they lie about it in telegram?
Update:
2-1-2018
Storiqa has restricted their reddit page to approved users only. Afraid people might learn the truth?