How do noobs get into projects that knowledgeable people have not heard of?

I am talking about the scammy project like Hex and OneCoin.

There are some projects that get a lot of money from noobs even though many crypto experts have never heard of them. OneCoin is probably the most famous example. In 2017 this sub never spoke about it. We didn't even know it existed until it got busted and was on the news. I was paying attention to 10s or even 100s of coins at that time but never OneCoin. I knew about Bitconnect because of the adverts on CMC and so did the members here.

Hex is another example but one which is well known to us and we avoid it.

How do noobs get into that stuff and bypass all the more reputable projects?