In the summer of 2024, a single word "Hawk Tuah" during a street interview made Haliey Welch an overnight sensation and she became the "Hawk Tuah girl" that was hotly discussed on the entire Internet.
However, just a few months later, this internet celebrity was involved in a fraud scandal due to a crypto project - the meme coin #HAWK that she "endorsed" collapsed, investors denounced her as a fraud, the FBI even came to search her house, and the SEC intervened in the investigation.
In the latest episode of the "Talk Tuah" podcast on May 20, Welch described this nightmarish experience in detail for the first time:
The FBI not only raided her grandmother's home, but also took her to Nashville for several hours of interrogation. "They went through every message in my phone and asked about all contacts related to cryptocurrency."
Welch recalled, her voice still trembling. The overnight internet celebrity admitted that the experience "almost put her in jail" and caused countless fans who trusted her to lose all their money.
Background Overview
After Haliey Welch became popular last year, she quickly seized the traffic dividend, not only launching related peripheral products, but also interacting with many celebrities, appearing on "Saturday Night Live" to be spoofed, and even throwing out the first pitch for the New York Mets.
Last September, she took advantage of the opportunity to launch the podcast "Talk Tuah", inviting heavyweight guests such as billionaire Mark Cuban. In February this year, the podcast was rated as the "fastest growing new podcast in 2024" by market research firm Edison Research.
Last December, Haliey Welch launched the "Hawk Tuah" token (HAWK), named after her iconic catchphrase.
The speed of HAWK's collapse was shocking. On the first day of the token's listing, the market value plummeted from a peak of $500 million to only $25 million, a drop of 95%. Such a drastic price fluctuation immediately aroused market doubts, and many people accused it of being a typical "pump and dump" scam.
Although the Welch team strongly denied the accusation, several industry insiders, including Coffeezilla, a cryptocurrency anti-fraud blogger with 4 million followers, publicly criticized the issuance.
Coffeezilla said in a live confrontation with Welch's team that the $HAWK launch was "one of the worst and most tragic cryptocurrency launches I've ever seen" and directly accused Welch of insider trading. This incident not only severely damaged Welch's image as an internet celebrity, but also made more people pay attention to the huge risks hidden behind #MemeCoin investment.
After the incident broke out, Haliey Welch immediately suspended all social media activities and podcast updates to cooperate with the FBI and SEC investigations.
FBI raids grandmother's home, SEC clones cell phone for evidence
"They knocked on my grandmother's door and she almost had a heart attack," Welch recalled on the latest episode of his podcast, Talk Tuah.
After the collapse of $HAWK coin, the FBI quickly intervened in the investigation. The agents not only searched her home, but also took her to Nashville for interrogation. "A room full of men took turns to interrogate me, asking me to explain all my contacts related to cryptocurrency, and even went through every record in my phone."
Even more disturbing is that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also subsequently took notice of the case. "Instead of talking to me, they took my phone and returned it three days later." Welch speculated that the investigators may have cloned her device and extracted all the data.
Although she was not included in the lawsuit list in the end and was cleared of suspicion legally, the psychological shadow brought about by this incident is far from dissipated.
After the incident broke out, Hailey and her team experienced tremendous pressure. Their phones were "harassed" by malicious messages, and they were confronted by people at the airport asking "Where's my money?" They even received death threats, including one threatening to "chop her up and feed her to the dog." She once hid because she was worried about public hatred.
“Puppet” promotion: knowing nothing about encryption
The collapse of $HAWK was not accidental. Welch revealed that she knew almost nothing about cryptocurrency at first and considered herself to be inadequately knowledgeable. But in the end, after repeated introductions from brokers, she was attracted by the bright prospects portrayed by the project, which promised to pay for marketing expenses and donate to her charity, which made her feel that this was a good business.
She said that the project initially described the task as "very little work" and that she only needed to record a selfie video according to the copy provided by the other party and send it to the operator, who would post it on her Twitter account. Hailey even revealed that she did not download the X app on her phone and did not know the crypto community members convened by the project operator. Almost everything she posted was what the other party asked her to read, and she had no idea what it meant.
"They promised me it was a good project and I only needed to shoot some promotional videos and I would get paid for it," she said in the podcast.
However, the actual situation was far more complicated than she had imagined - her Twitter account was completely controlled by the project party, and she had never even installed the app. All tweets and interactions were operated by the team behind the scenes.
In December, $HAWK was officially launched, and Welch was invited to attend a cryptocurrency conference. But on the day of the launch, the well-known anti-counterfeiting blogger Coffeezilla suddenly broke into the live broadcast and questioned the authenticity of the project on the spot.
"They muted me immediately, and there was chaos," Welch recalled. "That's when I realized something might be wrong."
As expected, the price of $HAWK coin plummeted by 99.8% in just 48 hours, and investors lost all their money. Blockchain data showed that the project wallet had an abnormally large transfer amount, involving an amount of up to 1,200 ETH (about 4.3 million US dollars), and Welch insisted that he "did not get a penny" in the end: "All the promotion fees were used to pay for lawyers and crisis public relations."
“Investors’ actual losses were $180,000, not $1.2 million”
Initially, rumors spread that the $HAWK crash resulted in a $1.2 million loss, but Welch clarified in a podcast that the actual loss was about $180,000 (about 1.26 million RMB), and the rest of the funds may have been swept away by "sniper bots" or speculators. However, this did not alleviate her guilt.
"What hurts me most is the private messages from fans," Welch said. "Some said it was their children's tuition, and some lost their entire month's living expenses..." She admitted that she knew too little about cryptocurrency at the beginning and believed the project's promises, which ultimately made the fans who trusted her become victims.
She added that the experience taught her an important lesson about who to trust. Hailey said she had "nothing to hide" and lamented that she "wish we had known the truth back then."
Now, despite being cleared of all charges, Welch said the experience has taught her a profound lesson. "If anyone asks me to promote cryptocurrency again, I will punch him directly." The internet celebrity said that she now just wants to return to her peaceful life and work hard on content with her friends.
