Would you like to know where the fruit you’re eating came from? Maybe know how it was planted, harvested and transported? Well, Prodeum is a startup whose aim was to create a platform that will be used to monitor and track fruits and vegetables from the farm to your table. The startup believed so much in their idea, they set up an ICO (Initial Coin Offering), asking people to invest in them through Ethereum.
However, a few days after their ICO started, the startup seemingly vanished from the face of the internet, leaving investors holding their own fruit and the word “penis” on what used to be the startup’s landing page. At the time of press, the website had been taken down but it had already left a footprint on the internet:
https://twitter.com/thelateempire/status/957527371221028865
Can’t stop thinking about the fact that a company promised to put fruit and produce on the blockchain (whatever the hell that means), held an ICO, ran away with their investors’ money, and only left the word “penis” on its website.
— Ryan Mac 🙃 (@RMac18) January 28, 2018
In an effort to unravel what had happened to Prodeum, it came to light that the startup had also used fake images and profiles of their supposed founders:
It was also discovered that the startup had faked having “fans” by hiring Fiverr (a global online marketplace offering tasks and services) users to brand their bodies with the startup’s name and post it on social media.
lololololol it looks like Prodeum was paying people from Fiverr to write its name on their bodies pic.twitter.com/501JVdpKZM
— Ryan Mac 🙃 (@RMac18) January 29, 2018
After this news broke, Prodeum pulled down their “penis” website and their social media accounts at the same time, TokenDesk – a website that promotes ICOs also removed Prodeum’s page from its platform.
The Loot
At first, everyone thought that Millions of dollars in investment had disappeared into thin air, but it seems we overestimated people’s love for fruit and vegetable. We dug up Predeum’s ICO address and we were surprised to see that at the time of exit, Prodeum had only managed to raise $11.57 worth of Ethereum, with a total of 44 transactions.
Apparently, the $11.57 dollars worth of Ether were then sent to another wallet which currently has a value of $91.25 and a total of 5 transactions, all from the same address.
Maybe, just maybe, the “penis” that was left behind on Prodeum’s landing page was a message from the scammers to all of you for not believing in fruit, because an 11-dollar heist is an outright middle finger to the brains behind the scam.
