Alpha Trading Signals / Best Trade App ("Olivia Bennett", "Professor Blake")

An Instagram ad leads to a Telegram group where a "professor" and his assistant run a signal service and move members onto a trading app that shows their positions winning. Withdrawal is then blocked behind an upfront commission the operators refuse to deduct from the profits they are displaying. Between August 2025 and January 2026 at least eight people described the same sequence in one thread, several posting screenshots of the app and of the demands. Reported losses run from about $1,000 to over $2,000 on top of the fictional gains: one member was told to deposit $5,600 for "identity verification", another that his withdrawal was held by "miners" until he funded more computing power, a third that the USDT that reached his wallet was a token that only resembles Tether. The operation renames itself while keeping the same staff names - Best Trade App became Top Trades App and Alpha Trade Circle within six months. The signals are the doorway, not the product; nothing is traded at any point. Community reports, August 2025 - January 2026; the operator names are aliases.