In plenty of places seed investments have been open to the general public just about forever and as far as I know there have not been any major differences between the number of scams purported there versus in countries where investors need to be accredited.

Crowdfunding is currently doing a great job educating people on the risks of putting money up for vapourware but since those are not investments per se there is still a gap in that education that will surely be filled once the stops are pulled. Organized crime is already involved in investments, look no further than the LPs of some of the funds that have high visibility. That's a far quicker way to get a return than to bilk a few million out of the pockets of the gullible public at large.