The article is very misleading here. The cease-and-desist letter is clearer[0]. They intended to raise $15 million, but the SEC stopped them within a day of their ICO launch, when they had only raised about $60,000

[0] https://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2017/33-10445.pdf Fact 27

Probably, this is one reason why a lot of the ICOs are being scrutinised.

A small number of investors buy up the tokens, the ICO then sells out in record time and looks like it’s some kind of amazing hot tech.

As soon as the tokens become tradeable, the value is immediately several times higher (due to the hype) and the original investors cash out a large portion of their investment.

Due to the immense amount of capital they can then rinse and repeat on every token sale and spread out their portfolio across the entire crypto space. If a token does skyrocket they’re invested enough to still profit.

They probably had a lead investor who put in $10m, two or three who put in $1m, and so on. The last 20 probably contributed less than $20k each.

A lot of people have a ton of btc and don't really view it as real money

Decentraland probably had 2 investors, Tezos god knows... So yeah it's not that unheard off in the ICO market.