New food delivery service turns out to be a fraud, rips off half a million dollars

It’s arguably the best-prepared altcoin scam of the year. A platform called Crypto Eats supposedly wanted to mess with Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Co and issue its own coin as an asset. As a means of payment for the food delivery, Crypto Eats should want to accept cryptocurrencies.

The scam appeared believable mainly because the supposed startup had succeeded in defeating British tickers like fitness influencer Harrison Sullivan aka Hstikkytokky as advertising icons. Crypto Eats had clothing, transport bags, promotional items and even delivery bikes made to look authentic. The alleged service even had a launch party in London.

Not only Sullivan fell for this, but a whole series of potential supporters who had lured Crypto Eats with the issuance of the service’s own altcoin EATS and alleged Series A funding of over eight million dollars.

For the preparation of the fraud, which at first glance appears to be extremely detailed, the creators of the crypto-eats scam ultimately only captured a disappointingly low sum of around 500,000 US dollars from their bona fide investors.

There are also good reasons for this. Because the external image, which is convincing at first glance, is offset by miserable brand communication. A press release apparently processed with an automatic translator should in any case have been less trustworthy:

“Rumors are always what keep the FinTech industry going and make it competitive. Among the many rumors, one is under development about a new food delivery app, ”the statement said. “Crypto Eats can look forward to sooner rather than later, as it should hit the market in early 2022 or before the end of the fourth quarter of 2021.”

Even the press release, apparently in the original English, was bursting with grammatical and spelling errors. “Said decentralized food delivery app has been in development since last year to bridge a payment system for food delivery that can bring in both the use of cryptocurrencies and the credit card for payments.”

This amateurish public relations work may have prevented greater damage. And it wasn’t long in coming. Shortly after the launch party for the EATS coin, Crypto Eats disappeared from the Internet without a trace within a few minutes.

Research also revealed that the founder of Crypto Eats, a man named Wade Philips, who allegedly had contracts with chains like Nando’s and McDonald’s and hired a veritable army of drivers, didn’t exist at all. Had it not been for Tiktokers like Sullivan, who has almost 400,000 followers, or DJ Charlie Sloth with a million Instagram followers as advertising faces, a large part of the damage that occurred could have been prevented.

The rapper Bouncer even appeared in full supplier uniform. Bouncer and Sullivan are saddened and have apologized several times. That is not enough for some.

They demand that influencers who bring their followers into such situations must also take full responsibility for them. After all, Sullivan is said to have even promoted the coin deal as a kind of no-brainer.