Hawk Tuah Girl Haliey Welch Talks About FBI and SEC Interrogation Over Crypto Lawsuit

Hawk Tuah girl Haliey Welch became an internet sensation overnight after a TikTok video of her giving intimate advice in a street interview went viral late last year.

Welch leveraged her fast-rising popularity to launch a podcast, a merchandise line, an AI dating app, and a cryptocurrency called HAWK, which landed her in serious trouble.

Welch pitched the HAWK cryptocurrency as a community reward for her fan base, but the launch didn't work as planned. The crypto token price crashed soon after reaching a £373 million ($500 million) market cap, resulting in massive losses for Welch's fans who invested in the digital asset. Court records showed investors claimed to have lost over £111,917 ($150,000) in the HAWK meme coin.

A lawsuit was filed against the crypto team and its business partners, alleging insider token manipulation. Welch's association with crypto drew backlash from her massive fan base and US financial regulators. The Hawk Tuah girl disappeared from the internet at the end of 2024 and finally resurfaced after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) closed its investigation into her.

Cayman Island-based sellers and promoters reportedly misused Welch's newfound fame to promote the HAWK token as a registered security. The lawsuit alleged that the Hawk Tuah team failed to register the meme coin per securities laws. It was estimated that the team pocketed £2.46 million ($3.3 million) from the botched launch and netted an additional £1.49 million ($2 million) in fees from transactions conducted via the Meteora exchange.

Several months after the SEC cleared Welch, she finally opened up about the cryptocurrency scandal and the ordeal she faced in a new episode of her Talk Tuah With Haliey Welch YouTube podcast.

FBI Knocked on her Grandmother's Door

In a conversation with her longtime friend Chelsea Bradford, Welch shared that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) knocked on her grandmother's door as part of their investigation.

'They wanted to see my phone, so I was like, "OK, well, that's not a problem,"' Welch said, adding that they interrogated her about everything related to the cryptocurrency and the people she discussed it with over the phone. 'They went through my phone, so they cleared me. I was good to go,' she noted.

However, the interrogation was followed by the involvement of the SEC. While they didn't want to talk with Welch, they took her phone for a few days for analysis. 'I guess they cloned my phone, copied it, something. But they went through my phone, I was cleared from them, and I wasn't named on the lawsuit, either,' Welch explained.

In the podcast, Welch admitted she didn't understand that the HAWK token would cause her fans such financial losses. She said it 'makes me throw up' that her fans trusted her to have lent her likeness to a meme coin she didn't fully understand.

Welch revealed that she received payments for marketing efforts and promotion activities related to the HAWK coin but never made anything from the token itself. She acknowledged that investors lost around £895,338 ($1.2 million) in the botched crypto launch, but around £134,300 ($180,000) was related to her fans, while the rest likely involved scammers.

Welch said the crypto lawsuit experience taught her vital lessons about whom to trust. 'I don't have anything to hide. I wish we knew then what we know now,' she concluded.

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