Propose an edit: Haliey Welch

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Title Category One sentence summary Infobox, one "key: value" per line Article body, markdown, use [[wiki links]] and end with a ## References section

Haliey Welch is an American internet personality from Tennessee who became famous in June 2024 as the Hawk Tuah girl, after a crude turn of phrase in a street interview made her one of the year's biggest viral celebrities. Her entry in trench history comes from a single chapter: the December 2024 launch and collapse of [[HAWK]], covered in detail at [[hawk tuah coin]], which turned a mainstream meme celebrity into the face of the [[celebrity coin wave]]'s worst outcome.

## From meme to media brand

Welch converted her fifteen minutes into a media operation with unusual speed, launching the Talk Tuah podcast in September 2024 and signing merchandising and appearance deals. It was this momentum that the HAWK project was built on: a token pitched as the monetization of her fandom, launched on [[Solana]] on December 4, 2024 with a presale run by the Hong Kong firm overHere Limited. According to the amended class action complaint, the groundwork was laid months earlier: plaintiffs allege that Memetic Labs and Welch's company 16 Minutes LLC executed a "Meme Token Creation and Monetization Agreement" on July 18, 2024, formalizing her promotional involvement and compensation and granting Memetic Labs access to her social media account, with her manager Johnnie Forster connecting her to the crypto promoters. The Daily Dot's reporting identifies the crypto operators behind the coin as Alex Larson Schultz and Clinton So.

## The HAWK chapter

HAWK reached a market capitalization of roughly 490 million dollars and collapsed more than 90 percent within hours. The investigator Coffeezilla confronted the team on a launch night livestream over supply concentrated in presale and [[sniper]] wallets, and Forbes reported that Welch was widely criticized for the chaotic launch. Welch's defenders argued she was a hired face rather than an operator, and subsequent reporting supported a limited role: her representatives said in March 2025 that the SEC had closed its inquiry into her without charges, and she said in 2025 interviews that the FBI had examined her devices and cleared her, describing herself as blindsided by the token's mechanics.

Her first response, posted to X on December 20, 2024, pledged full cooperation with the investors' legal team and directed affected holders to [[Burwick Law]], the same firm that later added her as a defendant.

## The class action

The buyers' suit is formally captioned In Re $HAWK Token Securities Litigation, Case No. 1:24-cv-08650-AMD-JRC, in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The amended complaint names Alex Larson Schultz, Solana Sweeper, Memetic Labs LLC, overHere Limited, Clinton So, Tuah The Moon Foundation, Benjamin Chow, [[Meteora]], Dynamic Labs Limited, Johnnie Forster, 16 Minutes LLC, Haliey Welch, and Doe Defendants 1 through 10, asserting six causes of action including unregistered securities sales, fraud, false advertising, breach of contract, and unjust enrichment.

Welch was added as a defendant in the November 2025 amendment, alongside Forster and 16 Minutes LLC. Plaintiffs allege she stood to earn about 325,000 dollars, broken down as 125,000 dollars paid immediately plus 200,000 dollars tied to promotional milestones; the claim against her personally is unjust enrichment, with the amended complaint alleging the payments turned her "from a passive celebrity into a critical component of a coordinated marketing funnel." These are plaintiffs' allegations, which her side disputes. Burwick Law's case page, last updated March 30, 2026, still lists the matter as a pending class action, and no ruling, dismissal, settlement, or class certification had been reported through August 19, 2026.

## Aftermath and return

Welch largely disappeared from public view after the collapse. Her attempted comeback at VidCon in June 2025 drew heckling and walkouts, which Sportskeeda and others tied directly to the coin controversy. In March 2025 she announced a documentary about her rise titled DocTuah, and in 2025 she appeared as herself in the Chad Powers episode "1st Quarter."

In March 2026 she gave a round of interviews, including to The Hollywood Reporter and a March 21, 2026 long form sit down on Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan, detailing her account of the launch, the investigations, and her insistence that she does not have anybody's money. On Channel 5 she gave her first extended account of the collapse: "I did not control the coin myself. I'm not smart enough to do that" and "I didn't have anything to do with it besides putting my name on it." She described the launch room ("The guy that was in the room with us, the one that was like operating...") and said she learned the scale of the fallout from TikTok: "I pull up TikTok and the next thing I know, oh yep, Haley Welch is going to jail." The Daily Dot's writeup of the interview cites a 12 plaintiff suit claiming about 151,000 dollars in collective losses. The March 2026 media round appears to have been interviews rather than new podcast output: as of mid August 2026 the Apple Podcasts feed for Talk Tuah showed its most recent episode dated May 20, 2025, titled "Haliey Welch Tells All - Crypto Incident," with no 2026 episodes listed.

Her trajectory is the canonical cautionary tale cited in [[the trenches]] whenever a mainstream celebrity fronts a token: the operators kept the upside, and the face kept the consequences.

## References

- Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2024/12/05/hawk-tuah-creator-haliey-welch-criticized-for-chaotic-memecoin-launch-in-latest-bizarre-internet-stunt/
- The Block: https://www.theblock.co/post/355173/hawk-tuah-girl-says-fbi-sec-cleared-her-of-legal-wrongdoing-in-memecoin-fiasco
- hollywoodreporter.com: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/hawk-tuah-investigation-crypto-scandal-haliey-welch-1236222690/
- Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/hawk-tuah-meme-coin-haliey-welch-crypto-1235213606/
- Decrypt: https://decrypt.co/349110/hawk-tuah-girl-solana-meme-coin-lawsuit-after-cooperating-law-firm
- Sportskeeda: https://www.sportskeeda.com/us/podcasts/news-haliey-welch-aka-hawk-tuah-girl-s-vidcon-2025-event-erupts-audience-heckling-walkouts-following-crypto-controversy
- Yahoo: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/celebrity/articles/haliey-welch-better-known-hawk-210027798.html
- burwick.law: https://www.burwick.law/active-cases/hawk-tuah-token-lawsuit-in-re-hawk-token-securities-litigation
- Protos: https://protos.com/hawk-tuah-star-pulled-into-expanding-memecoin-lawsuit/
- dailydot.com: https://www.dailydot.com/culture/haliey-welch-hawk-tuah-girl-finally-speaks-about-her-failed-crypto-venture/
- betches.com: https://betches.com/haliey-welch-hawk-tuah-crypto-coin-lawsuit-her-response/
- podcasts.apple.com: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talk-tuah-with-haliey-welch/id1766136455
- Wikipedia, Haliey Welch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haliey_Welch

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