Florida man accuses Denver crypto school of fake crypto exchange

An individual from Florida, Brian Firestone, has come forward with a shocking claim of being scammed out of $860,000 by a fraudulent online trading school in downtown Denver and a fake cryptocurrency exchange in Cherry Creek.

Firestone recounts how he was introduced to John Smith from the Alpha Stock Investment Training Center in December. Smith promised to teach Firestone how to trade cryptocurrencies and even gave him $500 to start his journey.

The Alpha Stock Investment Training Center, located at 1660 Lincoln St., directed its clients to use CoinBridge Partners, a company based at 950 S. Cherry St. According to Firestone, CoinBridge turned out to be a completely fake exchange.

The trading method employed by Alpha Stock Investment involved signal trading, where “professors” would recommend trades to clients like Firestone at specific times. Clients would then authorize the trade through their CoinBridge account.

Firestone initially saw his $500 investment grow to $55,000 and eventually decided to invest $50,000 more in January. Within a few weeks, his CoinBridge account balance soared to $2 million.

Despite facing a setback that saw his account balance drop to $12,000, Firestone continued to invest at the urging of Alpha Stock Investment. He eventually invested a total of $800,000, which led to his account balance reaching $24.5 million.

However, a trade involving the cryptocurrency USDT went awry, resulting in Firestone losing his $24.5 million balance due to a supposed “system error.” Firestone alleges that Alpha Stock Investment deliberately sabotaged his trade to empty his account once again.

Undeterred, Firestone borrowed another $1 million from the training center and continued trading, eventually reaching a balance of $6.6 million. However, he was unable to repay a $330,000 loan, leading to the closure of his CoinBridge account on May 1.

Firestone made a total of 11 payments amounting to $861,570 to ASITC and CoinBridge between January and March. He now believes that all the trades, gains, and losses were part of a larger scheme to defraud him.