A "trading school" and a fake exchange have allegedly defrauded an investor of USD 860K
An investor from Florida claims he was defrauded of USD 860,000 by a Denver-based trading "school" and a fake cryptocurrency exchange that promised life-changing profits.
In a lawsuit filed last week in a federal court, Brian Firestone alleges that the Alpha Stock Investment Training Center (ASITC), which operated in downtown Denver, partnered with a fraudulent exchange called CoinBridge Partners in Cherry Creek to carry out the scam.
Firestone claims that in December he was first approached by a man named John Smith, who said he represented ASITC. Smith offered to teach him how to trade cryptocurrencies and gifted him USD 500 to get started.
The now-defunct trading school’s website listed 1660 Lincoln St. as its address and directed users to trade through CoinBridge, which claimed to have raised USD 10 million from 600 investors. "CoinBridge is actually a completely fake exchange," Firestone wrote in the lawsuit.
USD 2.1 billion in stolen cryptocurrencies in 2025
So far in 2025, more than USD 2.1 billion has been stolen in cryptocurrency-related incidents, with most losses related to wallet compromises and poor key management, according to Ronghui Gu, co-founder of CertiK. The trend points to an increasing shift from code-based hacks to those targeting user behavior.
Just in 2024, phishing attacks caused over USD 1 billion in losses across nearly 300 incidents, making them the most damaging attack method in the cryptocurrency space.