Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

Haliey Welch aka Hawk Tuah Girl is in trouble over a meme coin rug pull scam

On December 12, Disney Plus invites you to go behind the scenes with Taylor Swift in an exclusive six-episode docu-series. I wanted to give something to the fans that they didn't expect. The only thing left is to close the book. The End of an Era. And don't miss Taylor Swift, the era's tour, the final show, featuring for the first time the tortured poets department. Streaming December 12, only on Disney Plus. So this is Haley, aka Haktua. And as of now, a lot of people want Haley to be thrown in jail.

Here's what happened. So Haley's 21 living in small town Tennessee, and she works in a factory that makes springs that they use in vending machines. But one night, Haley and a friend, they're out on the town in Nashville. And they're pretty tipsy. And they see a couple of guys doing street interviews for a YouTube series. And these guys end up approaching Haley and doing a street interview with her. What's one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time? Oh, you gotta give him that...

Yeah, you've seen the video. I don't have to show you. And you probably also already know that after the drunken interview, the guys go home and they upload the clips of Haley to social media. And the clip on TikTok blows the fuck up almost immediately. It goes viral and people are reposting it and pretty quickly it gets memed like millions of times. And people start calling Haley, Haley, the Hoc-Tua girl. And from here, Haley actually does the smartest thing she could do in this situation.

She's like, I'm about to capitalize on this. And before you know it, her social media starts getting a bunch of traction and she gets tons of followers and tons of fans. She signs with a management company. She starts getting invited onto podcasts. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. This is your first podcast ever, first anything ever.

Yes, ma'am. And suddenly she's invited to be on stage at a Zach Bryan concert. She's throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at a Mets game. All because she got drunk and made a joke about a wiener. Now eventually she teams up with Jake Paul's media company, and she wants to take advantage of her popularity by starting her own podcast, Talk to her. And it seems like she's making the most of her viral moment, and she's very likable, and a lot of people love her. Until...

Pretty quickly, she gets involved in a different type of venture, and this is what gets her in trouble. Now at some point, during all this, she partners with some crypto bros. And she and the crypto bros, they're going to launch her very own meme coin called Hawk. So, leading up to the launch, she allegedly gives some free Hawk tokens to some fans, and she rallies them to get in on this exciting opportunity, and everyone's going to be so rich, what could possibly go wrong from pushing a meme coin? Here's the thing about meme coins, though. Meme coins, or crypto based off of memes, they have a history of being pump and dump scams.

And influencers and sometimes celebrities, they will sometimes push these meme coins onto their fans, and, you know, it all turns out to be a scam, and the fans end up getting screwed. And Haley must be aware of this reputation meme coins have, because in this interview with Fortune Magazine, she reassures people that her meme coin is definitely not going to be a cash grab. Okay, y'all, drop your salon wallets. I'm giving out some meme coins for free. And so some of her fans get on board and they invest and they buy into it because they're going to be so rich off this.

And then finally the big day comes and boom. My hop meme coin is love! And so the coin launches and it hits a $490 million market cap allegedly. But then the worst thing that could happen happens. Less than 20 minutes after the launch, how? Over 90% of the shares are suddenly sold off and the coin crashes, losing 95% of its value. 95. That means that if you invested $1 into this coin, you would now be left with $5.

So a lot of people lose a lot of money over this. Here's the thing, though. Haley apparently doesn't lose any money over this. And the crypto bro she's partnered with, apparently they don't lose any money. money either. But the fans and the investors, they all do. And as you can imagine, they are pissed. And they feel something isn't right about this. And that is where this guy comes in. Coffee Zilla. Now, CoffeeZilla, he's a YouTuber and he's made a name for himself in the online space by calling out seemingly shady crypto behavior. And so CoffeeZilla, he's been watching this whole

meme coin launch thing play out. And he finds it all very suspicious. And he's convinced it's some kind of scam. And he's like, not on my watch. So then Haley and some of the crypto bros, they start a Twitter space because I guess they want to explain to the investors that this whole meme coin thing, it wasn't really a scam. It wasn't a rugpole. And maybe they're like trying to calm them down. Except the main crypto bro, this guy, Doc Hollywood, Doc Hollywood's speech to the investors doesn't exactly take accountability. In fact, it actually feels like it's blaming them a little. There's a lot of negativity in the space. I think crypto brings the mentally ill into this thing, right?

If you guys are in crypto, you're most likely mentally ill. And I'm going to count myself as mentally ill for even being here right now. We're trying to actually have fun. We're trying to do something cool. We're trying to give meme tokens away for free to people who have never had any crypto before, any meme token. And you guys should be kissing my f*** ass. And CoffeeZilla is there in the space and bro is just waiting for his turn to speak.

And when it's his turn, he lets them know what. What's up? I have questions. I'm raising my hand. Hey, guys. What coffee Zilla? Hey, this is one of the most miserable, horrible launches I've ever seen in my life. Okay, then why the fuck are you on?

I've been tracing it on chain for a while. You guys generated over a million dollars in fees while y'all's fans got rug pulled. There was snipers, but there was also insider trading directly linked to y'all's creator account. What are you guys doing? No, no, no, no. That's not true. That is true. That's a fact.

So then Doc Hollywood appears to get pretty riled up about CoffeeZilla's accusation. Brother, who profited over a million dollars was just made? I'm telling you a foundation that pays people out. And by the way, CoffeeZilla, I'm not asking you know, questions that have, that are irrelevant to the most important stuff that you said. Who cares where fees go? It goes to bills. When you're charging 15 percent, it goes to directors. You're charging 50 percent of a rug on. You're profiting from the There's no rug because we didn't pull a rug. I don't know what you're trying to say.

It's not true. Now, the funniest part of all of this is in the middle of all of this chaos, Haley, I guess she just suddenly gets tired and she's like, ah, I'm going to head out as if she's not in the middle of being accused of fraud. Hey, guys. I hate to interrupt you, Nick. Well, hello there. But, anywho, I'm going to go to bed and I'll see you guys tomorrow.

Okay. Amazing. Now, to be clear and to be fair to everyone involved in this, I don't know if this was a scam or a rug pull, as they call it. I don't know enough about the crypto space to make that call. But the people who do know the space really well are all saying, yeah, it was a rug pool and she got involved with some sketchy people. Now, I do know this.

At the end of the day, the fans, the investors, they lost a lot of money. While Haley and the crypto bros, apparently they made a ton of money. So the optics of this aren't looking good for them. And the people who do feel like they got conned, they're really, really upset, and some of them are calling for her to be thrown in jail, which, I promise you, Hoc2a girl is not going to be thrown in jail. That's just not going to happen. However, some of the investors did file official complaints with the SEC,

and there could possibly be lawsuits, but who knows? Now, after all of this happened, as of right now, as of me filming this video right now, Haley has gone pretty silent on her social media, but I'm sure she'll reappear at some point. And I'll keep you updated if anything happens beyond this, but my guess is that it won't. I mean, people rarely get in any real trouble for this crypto rugpole stuff. Welcome to America.