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.”
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.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has seemingly missed its decision deadline for the Canary Litecoin ETF, adding to uncertainty amid a government shutdown and new generic listing standards.
The ECB said it had reached agreements with seven entities not yet involving “any payment” responsible for components of the digital euro, potentially launching in 2029.
Baroness Michelle Mone says she will defy calls for her to step down from the House of Lords after PPE Medpro, a company founded by her husband, was ordered to repay £122m to the government for providing faulty PPE at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The peer has faced calls to stand down from MPsacross the political spectrum, including Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who earlier this week agreed with Baroness Mone’s contention that the government was pursuing a “vendetta” in trying to recover improper Covid funding.
“Too right we are,” she said in comments at the Labour Party conference.
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Baroness Mone ‘should resign’
In an extraordinary letter to the prime minister, Baroness Mone has accused Ms Reeves of endangering her and her family with her comments, citing the murders of Jo Cox and David Amess as evidence of the risks facing parliamentarians.
She also alleged ministerial interference in the civil and ongoing criminal investigations of PPE Medpro, and has called for an investigation into whether ministers have “improperly influenced” the Crown Prosecution Service and the National Crime Agency.
In the letter, sent from the private office of Baroness Mone OBE and seen by Sky News, she addresses the prime minister directly, writing in a personal capacity “first as a wife, second as a mother, and lastly as a Baroness.”
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£122m bill that may never be paid
Referring to Ms Reeves’ comments, she writes: “The chancellor’s deliberate use of the term “vendetta”, a word connoting vengeance, feud and blood feud, is incendiary and has directly increased the risks to my personal safety…. My family and I now live with a heightened and genuine fear of appearing in public.”
She goes on to accuse Reeves and health secretary Wes Streeting of “falsehoods” in demanding that she hand back £122m, pointing out that she was never a director of PPE Medpro and “never received a penny from it personally.”
While the company was founded by her husband Doug Barrowman, a High Court judgement this week confirmed that Baroness Mone introduced it to the government’s VIP fast lane for PPE providers, and lobbied on its behalf in negotiations.
She has previously admitted that £29m of profit from the PPE contract was passed to a family trust of which she and her children are beneficiaries.
The peer has also accused the Prime Minister of “a total lie” when “you stated in Parliament that my children had received £29m into their bank accounts.”
Baroness Mone said that following these comments, she had received threatening and abusive communications, and cited the death of TV presenter Caroline Flack, who took her own life, as showing “the fatal consequences of personalised public vilification”.
“Your cabinet members, by repeating this knowingly false claim, are inciting hostility and inflaming public hatred against me.”
Image: Baroness Michelle Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman. Pic: PA
She has also accused the home secretary of influencing the NCA and Director of Public Prosecutions in unspecified meetings to discuss “high-profile cases”.
“That political influence is being brought to bear is, therefore, undeniable,” she said.
On Wednesday, PPE Medpro was ordered to repay £122m paid for 25 million surgical gowns that failed to meet sterility standards in breach of its contract with the Department of Health and Social Care.
PPE Medpro was put into administration the day before the judgment, with assets of just £666,000.
Asked if Baroness Mone would step down from the Lords, a spokesman said: “Those calling for Baroness Mone’s resignation from the House of Lords would be well advised to read the open letter sent this morning to the prime minister, which sets out how this has now become a personal attack and vendetta, politically motivated with loss of all balance and objectivity.”
Sky News has asked Number 10 and the Treasury for a response to the allegations made by Baroness Mone.