Haliey Welch, better known as the “Hawk tuah girl,” says the Federal Bureau of Investigation briefly probed her after her “memecoin disaster” — the failed launch of a token in her image that she promoted.
Welch said in a May 21 episode of her “Talk Tuah” podcast that the FBI showed up at her grandmother’s house looking to speak to her over the Hawk Tuah (HAWK) crypto token, which many crypto commentators have called an exit scam.
“After the coin launch, the feds came to granny’s house and knocked on her door, and she called me, having a heart attack, saying: ‘The FBI is here after you, what have you done?’”
Welch said she handed over her phone to the FBI and met with agents who “interrogated me, asking me questions and everything else related to crypto.”
“They cleared me, I was good to go,” Welch said.
Welch went viral for her response about an oral sex technique in a vox pop interview posted to YouTube in June.
The HAWK memecoin, based on her viral catchphrase, launched in early December and almost immediately lost 90% of its value and blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps’ alleged insider wallets and snipers bought up and dumped massive quantities of the token at launch.
Haliey Welch speaking on her Talk Tuah podcast about the HAWK memecoin. Source: YouTube
Welch said on her podcast that the Securities and Exchange Commission also asked for her phone, and she sent it off “for two or three days” before she was cleared.
Welch’s lawyer James Sallah told TMZ in March that the SEC “closed the investigation without making any findings against, or seeking any monetary sanctions from, Haliey.”
“I trusted the wrong people”
Welch admitted knowing very little about crypto before the HAWK memecoin and said she “trusted the wrong people” for the launch.
She claimed a company, which she said she couldn’t name for legal reasons, was in full control of her X account, which posted videos of her promoting the memecoin.
Welch said she was sent lines to record on video, which were then posted on her X account by someone she trusted but could also not legally name.
She added that on the day of HAWK’s launch, she “kind of knew something was up” and was pulled into a room where a team of people told her to talk on a livestream with YouTuber Stephen Findeisen, better known as Coffeezilla.
“Coffeezilla got on there and they’re like ‘Mute it, mute it,’” Welch said. “Nobody warned me about this guy at all, like nobody at all, they didn’t tell me he was like a crypto wizard, that’s exactly what he is — he ate me the fuck up.”
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Welch said she was only paid a marketing fee and “did not make a dime from the coin itself,” which she said had been totally spent on legal and public relations fees.
A now-deleted post where Welch shared the HAWK token’s tokenomics before it launched. Source: X
Despite being cleared of any legal wrongdoing, Welch took some accountability, admitting that she let many of her fans down who invested in the coin:
“It makes me feel really bad that they trusted me, and I led them to something that I did not have enough knowledge about. I did not have enough knowledge about crypto to be getting involved with it. And I knew that, but I got talked into it, and I trusted the wrong people.”
A group of HAWK buyers sued the alleged creators of the token in December, claiming Alex Schultz, the token’s backing Tuah the Moon Foundation, the token launchpad overHere Limited, and its founder Clinton So promoted and sold HAWK as an unregistered security.
Welch wasn’t named as a defendant.
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