SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Two men pled guilty to fraud charges that involved hundreds of Utahns pouring in thousands of dollars.
According to the Department of Justice, over the course of 2019-2022, the men fraudulently obtained nearly $26 million. The scheme involved investors pouring in $30-40,000 per investor, with an apparent opportunity to make passive income through an automated Amazon store via investment company Alpha Influence, LLC.
“There’s no get-rich-quick, just don’t trust everybody’s idea of wealth and if someone’s really flashing it, they probably really don’t have it,” said Maegan Alder, an investor who never saw return on her $40,000 to Alpha Influence. “We were like, all in, that was a significant amount of money for us, we’re a single income family, my husband runs his own business, we’re self-employed, so it was a really big leap of faith.”
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Alder mentioned she found the investment through the wife of one of the two men on social media, someone she previously went to school with.
“It weighs on me a lot,” Alder said. “We’ve recovered, we’re fine but I know there (are) a lot of other families that aren’t.”
Jeremiah “the Bull” Evans and Kole Brimhall were both federally indicted and pled guilty to securities fraud charges. Evans also pled guilty to a money laundering charge.
Guardian Law in Draper is representing nearly 130 investors related to this case.
“My clients had to watch for a year or two while he (Evans) was on social media posting content with Lamborghinis and how well he’s been doing,” said Greg Christiansen, managing partner at Guardian Law.
Evans’ money laundering charge is related to a $50,000 wire transfer for a Lamborghini in 2021.
“This wire was from the proceeds of Securities Fraud,” the federal indictment said.
“Let’s not fool anybody to think he (Evans) just got into this and got over his head,” Christiansen said. “This was deliberate. This was planned out. It was a persona, ‘The Bull’, whatever you want to do to build himself up to be this guru, this person that was going to save all these people making all this money. When in in reality, it was and it was a very poorly drafted plan to steal people’s money.”
The scheme involving investors promised the investment principal would be recouped within 12 to 18 months, with a return on investment resulting on average of 7-10% per month after that.
“They were grabbing listings from other places like Walmart and they would relist it on Amazon, and so when people would be getting their orders it would be coming from a different service provider, not even through Amazon,” said Alder, whose Amazon store was shut down after cease and desist letters were sent from Amazon. “Hopefully other families can not be fooled into doing a passive income investment like this with all the stuff that happened.”
Alder worked directly with Brimhall, who was described as a sales agent for Alpha Influence, LLC. An investigation revealed Brimhall obtained nearly $4.9 million from 130 investors “through false statements, misrepresentations, deception and omissions of material facts.”
“So I feel responsible for making the choice, but I also felt like at the time I was doing everything I could to make sure that it was the right choice, it just didn’t work out that way so I hold hurt and pain,” Alder said.
Numerous attempts were made to reach Amazon for comment, however, the company never responded to multiple email inquiries over the span of two months.
KUTV also reached out to both attorneys representing Brimhall and Evans.
Craig Johnson, who represents Kole Brimhall, wrote:
“Although a minor player in this business, he was the first one to take responsibility for his reckless actions (one count of Fraud in the Offer and Sale of Securities) and is working hard to repay those whose investments failed. To be clear, he never intentionally or knowingly defrauded anyone. He was not a founder or principal in this business; in fact, he lost his own investment by detrimentally relying on his supervisors and their bosses. In sum, he was defrauded by Jeremiah Evans and others as well. He will continue to follow court orders to work in good faith to make the other victims whole regarding his limited involvement. If he knew then what he knows now, he would never have vouched for the success of Alpha Influence with the victims who he interacted with.”
Evans was described as the owner of Alpha Influence, LLC. An investigation revealed Evans obtained about $20,894,674 from approximately 530 victims.
“There is plenty of judgement here, there’s plenty of things that went wrong,” said Adam Cryak, who represents Evans. “But I do have a guy who’s seriously repented and seriously saying, hey, I’m going to try and fix this, I’m going to try and make it right, I know I’ve hurt people.”
Evans is scheduled for sentencing on April 3, 2025. Brimhall is scheduled for sentencing on March 24, 2025.
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