This project is so heavily riddled with red flags that it’s almost an impossibility to list them all in one place.

Initially, almost all major staff members at 4New were based in the United States, as per LinkedIn, despite this company being registered and located in the UK. Coincidentally, any checks to the locations of 4New’s offices in the UK would turn up blank, faceless buildings, or sites occupied by alternative companies. Two seperate entities are listed on Companies House: 4New Limited and 4New Holdings. In regard to the former, the director here is 4New founder Varun Datta. The latter is headed up by Sandeep Golechha, who – despite being listed on Companies House as the active director – purportedly resigned from 4New last year.

Alarmingly, in April of 2019, Companies House began proceedings to strike the company from the register and order its dissolution, owing to so little official involvement from the senior staff of 4New:

This is a similar trend throughout all aspects of this project: no updates, no involvement, and a company teetering on the edge of collapse. The founders have since disappeared from the face of the internet, with Varun Datta having cleared off his LinkedIn and social media. The company declared just over 1m GBP in total net assets in 2019, but there is nothing to show for this, or for the 42m USD taken in via their crowdfunding rounds.

Put simply: 4New was founded for the explicit intention of running this ICO. Nothing existed before, and nothing has existed after. Their promises and projections of a clear increase in the value of their KWATT token were merely designed to generate hype, and the token now exists as an almost entirely worthless entity. At it’s inception, the company claimed they had ties to tangible crypto mines and energy plants in Middlesbrough and Hartlepool, but these didn’t actually exist.

Shockingly, the main face behind 4New – Varun Datta – (aka: Dutta) has a long list of fraudulent and criminal behaviour behind him. In Delhi, he and his father were regularly entangled with the law for duping and conning businessmen out of million of rupees, defaulting on loans, forging official documents, and general deceitful acts. In particular, Varun was apprehended for scamming a businessman out of 50m Rs (720k USD). He has been labelled a ‘serial fraudster’. If this wasn’t bad enough, it is alleged that the ex-President of 4New – Saransh Sharma – is currently serving a 33-month prison sentence in the United States for fraud.

In an interview with the Mirror, Madeleine Teasdale (once listed as business development staff, but a director on Companies House) stated: “I wish I’d never met them” (in reference to the founders of 4New). She claimed she was short paid, or not paid at all for her services and since leaving the company and speaking out against them, has received anonymous death threats.

Put simply, this whole premise is a strict non-starter. The technology wasn’t ever there, the properties didn’t exist, and the company publicly declared a staffing of only five people. This was a ludicrous prospect at best. Across the crypto and ICO industry, there are vast allegations that this was a clear Ponzi scheme: the company garnered millions of dollars in pre-ICO investments, and then promised said investors that they would receive massive returns as the token grew exponentially in value year-on-year. This was, of course, a lie, as the company had no intention of putting into place what it had originally promised investors.

The proposal was that investors would use the tokens as a literal stake in the production of electricity in the power plant, gaining quarterly compensation for said stake, with the value of these repayments rising the more you stake. When considering this, it’s clear that there is no real utility. You could use any one of the existing cryptos or even fiat investments to make this work. There’s no real need for the KWATT token.

There were further, ridiculous claims of being able to use KWATT to pay for electric bills and for global healthcare, with nothing tangible to back these claims up.

In the whitepaper, the division of funds was proposed thusly:

However, as we know today, none of this was made a reality. There are quite simply no sign of the mass funds generated for this project. After the ICO, the company’s capital plummeted, and they claimed that the funds were being held in a third-party escrow account. As you would expect, there are absolutely no signs that this is a truthful statement. No development has been done, no milestones achieved, or hoals reached. No promises have been fulfilled and there’s certainly nothing to show for the 42m USD investments.

No – there is no need for blockchain implementation here. The project is thus: waste is collected, processed into energy, and used to drive a crypto mining farm. Investors stake tokens against the electricity and earn repayments on a quarterly basis. There are no aspects in this that require a decentralised ledger such as the blockchain.

Absolutely not – this is just an industry-standard ERC20 token.

Following our investigation, we can clearly say that this is one of the most shockingly deceitful ICOs we’ve ever seen at ICA. It is clear that from the moment this project was conceived, investors have been resoundingly scammed out of their funds. The company have absolutely nothing to show for their promises, and the 42m USD in funding has all but disappeared. There is nothing good that can ever come of this project, and it is time to form a solid class action to seek reparation for these despicable acts.

If you have been impacted financially by 4New’s ICO, please join this class action with confidence.