A Florida man claims he was scammed out of $860,000 by a Denver-based crypto trading "school" and a fake exchange that faked massive profits before erasing everything.

In a recent federal lawsuit, investor Brian Firestone accuses the Alpha Stock Investment Training Center (ASITC) and CoinBridge Partners of orchestrating a fraudulent scheme. Firestone says he was initially contacted in December by a man calling himself John Smith, who claimed to represent ASITC and offered to train him in crypto trading. Smith even gifted Firestone $500 to begin trading through CoinBridge, an exchange that claimed to have $10 million in investor funds but was allegedly fake.

The lawsuit claims ASITC lured users by offering "signal trading," where so-called professors would send exact trade instructions that users executed via CoinBridge. Firestone says his $500 quickly became $55,000, prompting larger investments. At one point, his account falsely showed a balance of $24.5 million.

Things unraveled in March when a USDT trade failed. Firestone says he couldn’t close the trade and was told a “system error” had wiped his balance. Despite borrowing $1 million more, he says his account was eventually locked when he couldn’t meet loan repayment terms.

ASITC, CoinBridge, Smith, and founder Raymond Torres are now being sued for fraud, theft, and racketeering. A separate company named Coinbridge Partners based in Wyoming has denied any link to the accused.

This case adds to a disturbing trend: over $2.1 billion in crypto thefts have been recorded in 2025 so far. CertiK reports that the biggest risks are no longer smart contract bugs but direct exploitation of user behavior—especially through phishing, which caused over $1 billion in losses across nearly 300 incidents in 2024 alone.