The second sentence answers the first: we do not want to trust criminals with people's livelihoods, so we leave lots of brainpower lying around outside of "normal society" because we don't want to let an embezzler write accounting software. Is it any wonder, then, that we would see an abnormal number of criminals end up working in a field where there was money but nobody to keep them out? You and I can choose between academia, industry and weird self-owned schemes, but there is a certain group of smart people that have only one option...
They served their time, and the justice system has deemed them safe, and they hopefully learned their lesson, so please welcome their return to free society. It is much better for everyone if they could actually contribute their skills to the betterment of humanity by participating in the legal free market, especially if they have specialized skills in demands, rather than potentially risking that they return to the life of crime out of necessity as a result of being isolated from the legal free market.
Given that cryptocurrency currently and historically has existed almost solely as a "you can get rich quick with this" scheme, I don't find it surprising at all.
Embermine is a mostly unknown project but one in which the scam is pretty obvious. Search for `"James Carl Drake" Nebraska Mugshot` on Google Image Search and you will see mugshots of the founder of the "Embermine" platform. "CEO" served 15 years probation for defrauding people writing bad checks, among other convicted felonies. Has been known under at least three different legal names. Convicted felon in multiple states. All public info.
Their ICO raised very little money but they have funded their cryptofailures through lying to unsuspecting speculator/investors, promising all sorts of big developments that are bound to happen "soon". For example, promising to be listed on Binance to one investor to secure a deal. Sometime back in December people began to notice that nothing was going on, which is when it was revealed by ex employees that nobody was working for him/them anymore. Turns out the guy took out loans to many people online, didn't repay them. Stole money from some as well, i.e. people sent ETH for tokens but got nothing back. People started asking tough questions, got banned from Telegram (of course). One "proof" of progress given by the CEO was a picture of him writing an Ethereum smart contract in... Microsoft Word. Can't make that up.
Their "CEO" is basically defrauding people, claiming to possess all sorts of skills he obviously does not have in order to instill confidence in his variety of projects. The stream of bullshit that comes out of there is endless. James Drake makes up a random project, associates a token to it, mints it all to himself and then "airdrops" part of it all the while selling his own tokens on the market or in OTC trade with unsuspecting investors. His latest idea? "BONG" tokens. This is completely insane, I could go on for hours.
So it's really just simple, low-level crookery. Yet it's still ongoing, people are still getting scammed. This sort of long-tail scam you don't hear much about but I suspect it's much more widespread than cryptocurrency proponents would like to admit. I'm sure others will recognize the behaviour even if they have never heard of Embermine in particular.