cryptopolitan.com
Hailey Welch, the face of the $HAWK token will now have to talk tuah (sic) judge as a federal one recently granted leave to amend the initial complaint filed in December 2024 by investors who had lost money after the token dumped 90-95% in mere hours following its peak around a $500M market cap.
Haliey Welch and several other associated entities have been named as defendants in an amended lawsuit alleging she profited over $325,000 from the $HAWK memecoin’s fraudulent launch.
Welch may now face legal trouble
The leave to amend the complaint regarding the $HAWK token was granted because the plaintiffs were contacted by an informant who provided incriminating chat logs that prove the whole process was premeditated and there was coordination among the entities involved.
The informant reportedly shared evidence that ultimately led the plaintiffs who engaged blockchain forensics experts, who also linked the wallets involved in the scheme to previous similar $LIBRA token, $M3M3, and $AIAI pump and dumps.
The analysis showed that all those schemes happened on the Meteora platform under the oversight of CEO Ben Chow. These schemes had similar technical signatures, including false “permanently locked” liquidity badges.
The new defendants now include Hailey Welch, her manager Jonnie Forster and company 16 Minutes LLC, Meteora and its CEO Chow, Solana Sweeper, Memetic Labs, and Dynamic Labs Limited.
Welch and all her fellow named defendants are now accused of unjust enrichment. This is the part that got her implicated as she was allegedly paid over $300,000. Welch allegedly got $125,000 as an upfront payment and a further $200,000 upon completion of various promotional milestones linked to the token’s allegedly “fraudulent marketing campaign.”
Those funds reportedly came from the Tuah the Moon Foundation and associated wallet clusters. They allege those payments make Welch a co-conspirator rather than a victim who simply didn’t understand the tech.
The other new claims, which included breach of contract, securities violations, false advertising, common law fraud, or violating New York general business law, do not pertain to Welch but to the other defendants.
The complaint also states that, “Every technical component — pre-sale allocation, float restriction, sniper configuration, liquidity provisioning, Meteora infrastructure, and wallet-cluster coordination — functioned together to create a carefully constructed on-chain roadmap for fraud.”
Where is Hailey Welch?
Welch parlayed her popularity into her podcast Talk Tuah, but she has gone radio silent and has only resurfaced in brief snatches of time since she alleged she was going to bed just before her memecoin crashed by over 90%.
The initial complaint did not name her as a defendant. However, she resurfaced toward the end of December 2024 to tell her fans she was cooperating with the investigation.
In the months that followed, she went quiet again, halting her podcast and avoiding public appearances, most likely in an effort to distance herself even more from the project.
This year, Welch has turned up in small measure, only relaunching podcasts and granting interviews at high-profile events like VidCon and Vanity Fair. In the Vanity Fair interview, she addressed the scandal, but she has not touched the subject on her social media page.
At the time of this writing, it appears there are no legitimate X accounts linked to Hailey Welch; only scam accounts posting generic crypto slop.
As for the other new defendants, Ben Chow has in the past denied allegations of facilitating these schemes.
Last year, around when the complaint was initially filed, OverHere Ltd. issued a brief statement denying any wrongdoing while expressing confidence in the legal process.