Hawk Tuah girl recounts: FBI raid, death threats... endorsing MEME coin is a nightmare

The overnight celebrity admits that the experience made her "almost go to jail" and made countless fans who trusted her lose their money. (Synopsis: MrBeast: If I could repeat "I would all in Bitcoin!" Why BTC coincides with his Internet celebrity philosophy) (Background supplement: Crypto public hearing directly hits] The Financial Regulatory Commission responded to Huang Shanshan's version of the draft "Naguan KOL": can punish cooperative companies, Internet celebrity license re-study) In the summer of 2024, a sentence of "Hawk Tuah" in a street interview made Haliey Welch popular overnight and became a hotly discussed "Hawk Tuah girl" on the Internet. However, just a few months later, the influencer was involved in a fraud storm for a crypto project - the meme coin HAWK she "endorsed" crashed, investors angrily denounced it as a fraud, the FBI even went directly to the door to search, and the SEC intervened to investigate. In the latest issue of the Talk Tuah podcast on May 20, Welch detailed the nightmarish experience for the first time: The FBI not only raided and searched his grandmother's home, but also took her to Nashville for hours of interrogation, "They rummaged through every message on my phone and questioned all the contacts related to cryptocurrencies." Welch recalls, his voice still trembling. The overnight celebrity admits that the experience made her "almost go to jail" and made countless fans who trusted her lose their money. Background Overview Haliey Welch quickly seized the traffic dividend after last year's explosion, not only launching related merchandise, but also interacting with multiple celebrities, appearing on "Saturday Night Live" to be spoofed, and even kicking off for the New York Mets. Last September, she launched the podcast Talk Tuah, featuring blockbuster guests like billionaire Mark Cuban, which was named "the fastest-growing new podcast in 2024" by market research firm Edison Research in February. Last December, Haliey Welch launched the "Hawk Tuah" token (HAWK), named after her iconic buzzword. The speed of HAWK's collapse is staggering. On the first day of the coin's listing, the market capitalization plummeted from a peak of $500 million to only $25 million, a drop of 95%. Such a sharp price fluctuation immediately caused doubts in the market, and many people accused it of a typical "pull-up shipment" scam. While the Welch team adamantly denied the allegation, multiple industry insiders, including cryptocurrency anti-counterfeiting blogger Coffeezilla, which has 4 million followers, publicly criticized the offering. In a live confrontation with the Welch team, Coffeezilla bluntly stated that $HAWK's release was "one of the worst and most tragic cryptocurrency issues I've ever seen" and directly accused insider trading. This turmoil not only seriously damaged Welch's image as an Internet celebrity, but also made more people pay attention to the huge risks behind memein investment. The HAWK project was accused of fraud by investors and filed a lawsuit for $1.8 million. Immediately after the incident, Haliey Welch suspended all social media activity and podcast updates to cooperate with the FBI and SEC investigations. (The following is compiled by the Bitpush team based on an interview with Podcast) FBI raids grandmother's house, SEC clones phone forensics "They knocked directly on my grandmother's door, and the old man almost had a heart attack." Welch recalls in the latest issue of the podcast, Talk Tuah. After the $HAWK currency crash, the FBI quickly intervened in the investigation, and agents not only searched her door, but also took her to Nashville for interrogation. "A room full of men took turns interrogating me, asking me to account for all cryptocurrency-related contacts, and even rummaging through every record on my phone." Even more disturbingly, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) subsequently took its sights on the case. "They didn't talk to me, they just took my phone away and returned it three days later." Welch speculated that investigators may have cloned her device to extract the data in its entirety. Although she was not included in the lawsuit list in the end and has been legally cleared of suspicion, the psychological shadow caused by this turmoil is far from dissipating. After the incident, Hailey and her team experienced tremendous stress. Their mobile phones were "harassed" by malicious messages, and they met people at the airport asking "What about my money?" She even received death threats, including threats to "chop her up and feed it to dogs." At one point, she went into hiding because she feared public hatred. "Puppet" promotion: The collapse of the $HAWK, which knows nothing about crypto, is not accidental. Welch revealed that he initially knew almost nothing about cryptocurrencies and admitted that he lacked knowledge. But eventually, after repeated referrals from her agent, she was attracted by the bright prospects portrayed by the project, which promised to pay for marketing and donate to her charity, which made her feel that it was a good business. She said that the project team initially described the task as "a small amount of work" and only needed to record a selfie video based on the copy provided by the other party and send it to the operator, who would release it to her Twitter account. Hailey even revealed that he didn't download the Twitter app on his phone, was unfamiliar with the platform, and didn't know the crypto community members assembled by the project operators. Almost everything she released was asked to be read by the other party, and she had no idea what it meant. She mentioned in the podcast: "They promised that this is a good project, I just need to shoot some promotional videos to get the promotion fee." However, the reality is far more complicated than she thinks – her Twitter account is completely controlled by the project team, she has never even installed the app herself, and all tweets and interactions are operated by the team behind the scenes. In December, $HAWK went live, and Welch was invited to a cryptocurrency conference. But on the day of the release meeting, Coffeezilla, a well-known anti-counterfeiting blogger, suddenly broke into the live broadcast and questioned the authenticity of the project on the spot. "They silenced me immediately and the scene was chaotic." Welch recalls, "That's when I realized something might not be right." Sure enough, the price of the $HAWK coin plummeted 99.8% in just 48 hours, and investors lost their money. Blockchain data shows that there was an unusually large transfer in the wallet of the project party, involving an amount of up to 1200ETH (about 4.3 million US dollars), and Welch insisted that he "didn't get a penny" in the end: "All the promotion fees ended up paying for legal fees and crisis PR." "The actual loss for investors is $180,000, not $1.2 million" Initially, it was rumored that the $HAWK crash resulted in a loss of $1.2 million, but Welch clarified in the podcast that the actual loss was about $180,000 (about 1.26 million yuan), and the rest of the funds could be swept away by "sniper bots" or speculators. However, this did not alleviate her feelings of guilt. "What makes me most uncomfortable is the private messages of fans." Welch said, "Some people say it's their children's school fees, and some people pay for the entire month...... admitting that she knew too little about cryptocurrencies and believed the promises of the project team, which eventually made fans who trusted her victim. She added that the experience taught the church...