Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) - the hawk tuah flop comeback

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

Let’s catch up with Haliey ‘Hawk Tuah’ Welch since the fallout of the crypto scam that undercut her sixteenth minute. While most didn’t stick around to see what happened, a lot about the crypto world has empowered Team Tuah to keep going — getting one over on the government, a second botched pump and dump scheme, and a suspiciously timed podcast relaunch. To what end? We’ve got some ideas. See Jamie on tour for RAW DOG! https://us.macmillan.com/tours/jamie-loftus-raw-dog/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaf-I3pdBDpG51TvRPCIfkS08847rolEcVNOqDZCUX8Hq9t9sZlX9idj_DI9NQ_aem_niy1HGU3U4vldbC-KP7JsA Watch Coffeezilla’s breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiZVDY5jNYM&t=696sSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. It's Black Business Month, and Money and Wealth podcast with John Hope Bryant is tapping in. I'm breaking down how to build wealth, create opportunities, and move from surviving to thriving. It's time to talk about ownership, equity, and everything in between. Black and brown communities have historically been lasting lives. Let me just say this. AI is moving faster than civil rights legislation ever did. Listen to Money and Wealth from the Black Effect Podcast Network on iOS.

I heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. It's Black Business Month, and Black Tech Green Money is tapping in. I'm Will Lucas spotlighting black founders, investors, and innovators, building the future,

one idea at a time. Let's talk legacy, tech, and generational wealth. I had the skill and I had the talent. I didn't have the opportunity. Yeah. We all know, right? Genius is evenly distributed. Opportunity is not.

To hear this and more on the power of Black and the United States. and ownership, listen to Black Tech Green Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When your car is making a strange noise, no matter what it is,

you can't just pretend it's not happening. That's an interesting sound. It's like your mental health. If you're struggling and feeling overwhelmed, it's important to do something about it. It can be as simple as talking to someone, or just taking a deep, calming breath to ground yourself. Because once you start to address the problem,

You can go so much further. The Huntsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council have resources available for you at loveyourmindtay.org. Callsor Media. Hello, 16th minute listeners, Jamie here with a special announcement. I am going to be going on tour across the U.S. in just a couple of weeks to promote the paperback release of my book, Raw Dog, The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs.

If you don't know about raw dog, the naked truth about hot dogs, let me tell you it is a book about hot dogs that I wrote. It is the only book that I know that is strictly about the history of hot dogs from a leftist perspective, meaning that I love hot dogs, but we have to talk about how they're produced and the labor that it requires to produce them. I'm going to be going around the country, going to independent bookstores, and giving free chats about the books. So if you want to come out, talk 16th minute, talk hot dogs. dogs. You can come talk to a me, Jamie, in the following cities. Los Angeles, May 13th, Louisville, Kentucky, May 14th, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 15th. That's going to be a rough couple of days on a plane. Portland, Maine, May 19th, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, May 20th, Richmond, Virginia, May 21st, Petaluma, California, May 22nd, and Larkspur, California, May 31st. I will be releasing other dates as the summer goes on. so feel free to reach out and complain. I love it. You can reserve your tickets for free at the link in the description. I'm really looking forward to seeing you. And of course, I am wearing a little

outfit. Okay, enjoy the episode. They can't fail in a moment Six minutes of fame Sixteen minute of fame Sixteen minute of face One more minute of fame I'm not so bad when you say my mind Welcome back to 16th minute, the podcast where we talk to the internet's main characters

to see how their moment in the spotlight affected them and what that says about us and the internet. And just when you thought, the story of Haley Welch, aka Hawk to a Girl, the main character of 2024, had made her grand exit from the public consciousness. Well, this is the consequence of me covering main characters of recent history. It's never true. I'm always wrong. There's more to say. So this is the first episode that we've done of this kind,

but it's one that I felt was necessary because earlier this year, I did a multiple part series on Haley Welch, who went viral last year in a way that is barely possible anymore. after being featured without her consent as we get into in that series on a man on the street YouTube slash TikTok channel in which she became famous for saying you must and is she wrong but for all of what followed the clickbait fame

followed by the modern template of what viral fame looked like at this very particular moment in time, it was a lot, and it kind of sucked. But for those who listened to that series a few months ago, we have, as you know, undergone a million historical catastrophes since then. And so I do want to just refresh your mind a little bit. So come with me, if you dare, to December 2024. Fortunately, we have been here.

recently, not just in calendar linear time, but because we recently talked about this specific period of a few weeks in our Dr. Ali Luke's episode. But this is where we left off at the end of the Haley Welch series. To summarize, 21-year-old Haley Welch went to the Broadway district in Nashville, Tennessee, Tennessee being the state she grew up in, with her best friends after seeing a country music festival and were beckoned over by a man. man on the street aspiring social media douchebag bro duo called Tim and Dee, who asked them this inspired question. What's one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?

And, well, they asked this question to many women, and I will qualify that with many drunk women, always drunk women who can't quite give consent, nothing weird going on there. While most of these women answered with a version of the same thing, one woman. answered it the funniest, and that woman was Haley Welch, whose interaction with Tim and D, alongside her best friend Chelsea, lasts much longer in the original video, but during the age of the TikTok clip, it boils down to this. Oh, you got to give him that hook to and spit all that thing. And what Haley experiences from this moment on is uniquely 2024, sort of a collage of what the

viral online experience could look like at the highest level at this particular moment. She gets the classic overnight fame treatment, one characterized by near instantaneous online headlines in fame, but it's long past the days where this fame is easily parlayed into where her viral four mothers landed. You know what I'm talking about, the 2010's move to L.A. version of viral fame. the go-talk-to-Hollywood agencies, do a couple guest spots on sitcoms, and try to figure out how you might fit into a more traditional media culture. But that really didn't exist by the time Haley became famous in 2024. And in fact, you could argue that internet culture had since eclipsed that traditional media structure.

No, by the time Haley's moment came along, a new path for monetizing virality had been four. And while some influencers weren't able to make the jump from the internet pandering to Hollywood to the Hollywood pandering to the internet era between the mid-2000s and now, a couple dead. Think of them as the girls who made the jump from the silent pictures to the talkies. If the girls who made the jump from the silent picture to the talkies were a pair of adult blonde brothers with very dark spirits, I of course am referring to the polkies. Paul brothers, specifically, Jake Paul. We need to change from Kamala Harris to the Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Who is the younger brother of Logan Paul? Give a fight you, brother? Not in real life. You practiced a little bit. Never. We've never even sparred. But I was willing to step in from Mike Tyson when Tyson got sick and we actually ran it up the chain in Netflix. Who I promised to mention as little as humanly possible in this episode, but they'd just weasel their way into so many corners of internet history.

Since we have last recorded this show, they have attended Trump's second presidential inauguration with Theo Vaughn. Kill me! Kill me with a gun. But Jake Paul, who brought Haley Welch and her best friend Chelsea, along with the entire Hawk to a crew that had assembled, consisting of managers, publicists, lawyers. The list goes on, onto the betterness. network, a podcasting slash sports betting application, Jake Paul knows the online fame game

better than nearly anybody. The Pauls were a big part of observing this major change in what influencing looked like. They started on Vine, an app that no longer exists. They moved to L.A. when that was the thing to do. They pioneered the idea of moving a bunch of influencers into a mansion, and then ruining the mansion. Yeah, back up. Wow. I never thought I would say this, but welcome home, Jake Pollers. We made it, Mom.

We flippin made it. Good morning, Jake Pollars. What's flipping Gucci? Today is off to a flippant amazing start. We're moving in to the new Team 10 house. It is genuinely hard to find a douchebag influencer thing that these men have not done. In the mid-2010s, they were doing bad.

rap battles with their fellow influencers, they shamelessly hawked merch, but as the first Trump administration dragged on, they were part of this evolving influencer grift. And I think you'll recognize what I'm talking about here, the new influencer grift, which consists of this sinister blend of bad, long video podcasts, weird products marketed at children, pivoting to a hard Republican out of nowhere, pay-per-view boxing, sports gambling apps, and of course, cryptocurrency. So by the time Haley Welch came along, Jake Paul wasn't just a whole new kind of influencer, he had been a part of creating what this influencer was going to look like. So no longer living in the Team 10 house or doing whatever I blocked from my YouTube feed in the

mid-2000s. At this point, in 2024, Jake Paul was so busy with being a right-wing influencer that he was actively looking to find other influencers to host a shitty video podcast on his crypto sports betting app so that he could spend more time, say it with me, fighting a rapist on pay-per-view boxing. And this is the path to fame monetization

that Haley Welch was launched into. And her first major platform was a video, podcast that strictly featured guests with massive social media followings and usually video podcasts of their own. This was and is the podcast known as Talk Tua, which is objectively a really good name for that podcast. But that doesn't mean that it was a good podcast necessarily. Haley at the beginning is very uncomfortable on Mike and that is not a criticism of her. She literally became famous a couple weeks earlier. Make sure you hit follow on TalkToa wherever you get your podcast. We're releasing episodes every Tuesday. And for those of you watching on YouTube,

be sure you like, comment, and subscribe. Subscribe to that thing. No Riz. But this podcast, of course, gets a lot of press because of how close it happens to her moment of massive virality. And it even spawns an irony-pilled reaction podcast called Talking Talk Toa. Welcome to Talking Talk Toa, the official companion podcast to talk toa. I'm Peter and I'm Cam and we're your host here to the only official companion podcast. So talk toa does what it was supposed to do. Get a lot of attention and sell Jake Paul's better crypto sports gambling app to her relatively young audience. Even if the ad reads left something to be desired. Do you want to make $50,000 on the biggest fight of the year? The Jake Paul Mike Tyson fight is finally here. And Better is giving you a chance to win up to $50,000.

Simply by answering five questions about the fight. All you got to do is download better. I'm sold. But it's only a matter of time before Haley Welch's team was approached about starting a meme coin on their own. They were already so adjacent to crypto. And they were approached by a man named Doc Hollywood, I'm not joking, to use a service called Pump. Fun. I'm also not joking. Pump. Dot Fun is a service that allows influencers to mint their own crypto coin and basically make a quick buck. And while casual followers of Haley Welch may have found this pivot to crypto to be very confusing, if you were paying close attention to how her social media had developed since this first moment of fame and signing with an agency, the scene had been set for this for months.

As Twitter became a confirmed cesspit for crypto speculators and scammers, Haley Welch's team set up a Twitter account for her that exclusively spoke in crypto memes. Meanwhile, over on Haley's personal account on Instagram, she was acting like a normal young woman in her 20s. There was a huge narrative voice difference between these two accounts. And so a lot of people asked Haley on Twitter, is this you? Is this your team?

who is this? And in response, there would be front-facing videos of Haley insisting that no, this is her, she's very into crypto. It's me, bitch. What are you fucking mean? I do want to add that we had to pull that clip from a previous episode of 16th minute because all of these videos were deleted and it will become clear why in a second. Haley now readily admits that she was asked to film these videos, but she was absolutely not running the Twitter crypto meme account, because she didn't know anything about crypto, and she's too young to have any interest in Twitter. But all throughout the lead-up to the early December 2024 launch of what was known as Hawkcoin, Haley Welch played along in spite of admittedly knowing very little about how

crypto actually worked, much less how to, or if it's even possible, to work with it ethically. And this led to her, depending on how you feel, either being willfully or being tricked into a pretty massive scam by a man named Doc Hollywood. So let's say this man named Doc Hollywood has convinced you that you'll make a shitload of money on a crypto pump and dump scheme. But the only catch is that you need to post videos of you as if you totally understand what's going on. This is a strategy that, of course, went south very quickly. And if you want more details about how this exactly went down, go ahead and listen to earlier parts of this series. I hope these are things you already know, but it does feel important to remind you of what actually happened in this case. Because in recent months, and since I last wrote about this story, key players involved have begun to characterize the event that I have.

painstakingly, for some reason, tracked in the first run of these episodes and have changed the narrative to better suit their own interests. Because in recent months, a lot of the key players in this story, both Haley and the people who worked in her general orbit during this time, have begun to mischaracterize the events I just described. And if you have access to the original posts and timelines, it just doesn't match up at all. Why might that be? In Haley's case, I'll give you the generous reading first. When big, weird stuff happens to you and is covered extensively in the media that regardless of what you did right or wrong is definitely overwhelming and possibly traumatizing. Something I think about with Haley Welch is that this appeared to

suddenly put her in the position of being the breadwinner for her family. in the employer of her best friend in an industry that not only she didn't understand, but barely anyone understood, because the way that online influencing and all of these weird crypto situations work seems to change every two minutes. If I were to give a less generous reading, this is something we've seen from Haley Walsh before, or more specifically, Haley Welch and Company.

As we'll get into in this episode, Haley Welch has made it clear that she is interested in remaining in the public eye regardless of how compromising the thing that got her in the public eye was and that she's down to exploit others and to be exploited again. So we're in December 2024.

Trump has just been re-elected. A United Healthcare executive is assassinated by someone. I read the Reddit board, you guys. I apologize for my enthusiasm. And Jamie Loftus forces her fiancée to take the day off work to see Wicked and IMAX, and for the first and only time in human history, saw straight couples in the theater where the woman was loudly explaining the plot to the man. It was incredible.

And Ms. Haley Hocktua Welch releases what appears to be the final episode of her podcast Talk Tua on Jake Paul's Better Network, which, and I always laugh when I see this, is ominously titled How Not to Get Canceled. And then the feed goes completely dark. Because Haley Welch got canceled. Because it was at this time that the now infamous Hock coin, a meme coin, many correctly pointed out, should have been called Spitcoin, missed opportunity, but at least they thought of talked toa. But Hawkecoin was released to a crypto-consuming public in one of the most high-profile catastrophic rollouts to date, if crypto-journalist reaction was any indication.

I have questions. I have questions. I'm raising my hand. Hey, guys. What copy, 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? You've heard this voice on the show before.

this is the voice of Stephen Fendason, a.k.a. Coffeezilla, the journalist and extremely successful YouTuber who is at the forefront of calling out Hawkcoin for what it was, a crypto scam. Which isn't uncommon, but CoffeeZilla has a massive audience, and he correctly called out that this wasn't just a scam. It was a tremendously lazy scam, which, when you add the most memeable face of the year to it, meant a lot more press than most most. common pump and dub schemes of this nature would pull in. And then he goes on to make a very viral YouTube video about it. This then makes it public knowledge that the meme coin is a huge scam and it all but craters Haley Welch's fledgling career. But among people who were interested

in this story, the real question was, how aware was Haley that this was a huge scam? But we wouldn't get the answer to that question for months. Because after the crypto scandal, not only is an SEC investigation announced into the issue, but Haley Welch and basically everyone in her orbit go completely silent. They go dark on social media for months. Talk to us stops. Haley stops posting publicly and everyone assumes that her moment in the spotlight has ended in sort of the most humiliating way possible. The reason largely speculated for this sudden silence wasn't humiliation though. It was very much the lawsuit filed with the SEC in New York from people who had been defrauded to the tune of six figures by hawk coin leading to millions of dollars in

defrauding. But investigating these cases take some time, and the internet famously has no patience. And so almost immediately, we start to see lazy clickbait video essays saying things like this. What's going on with that Hawk to

a chick? Is she going to jail? What happened to Hawk to it? That's my girl. Which, like, no, she obviously wasn't going to jail. And there was never a chance that she would have because it was the orchestrators of the crypto coin named in the lawsuit, the Doc Hollywood. not the young woman being used as the face of the scheme.

And that kind of content is a whole cottage industry of taking a recently relevant person, often a woman, and painting them in the worst way possible. And while Haley absolutely fucked up, she is painted in a pretty misogynist and slut-shamey way in a lot of these videos. The hawk to a girl just got violated on Instagram. You see, she posted a real inviting, Trey Young to be on her podcast, all because he plays for the Atlanta Hawks so it would fit well with her brand.

And the Atlanta Hawks Instagram account commented saying we good, as Trey probably wants nothing to do with her. And congratulations, you're caught up. We all know, right? Genius is evenly distributed. Opportunity is not. It's Black Business Month and Black Tech Green Money is tapping in. I'm Will Lucas spotlighting black founders, investors, and innovators, building the future, one idea at a time.

Let's talk legacy, tech, and generational wealth. I don't think any person of any gender, race, ethnicity should alter who they are, especially on an intellectual level or a talent level to make someone else feel comfortable just because they are the majority in this situation and they need employment. So for me, I'm always going to be honest in saying that we need to be unapologetically ourselves. If that makes me a vocal CEO and people consider that rocking the boat, so be it. To hear this and more on the power of black innovation and ownership, listen to Black Tech Green Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In sitcoms, when someone has a problem, they just blurt it out and move on. Well, I lost my job and my parakeet is missing. How is your day? But the real world is different. Managing life's challenges can be overwhelming. So what do we do? We get support. The Huntsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council have mental health resources available for you at loveyourmindtay.org.

That's loveyourmindtay.org. See how much further you can go when you take care of your mental health. Hello, puzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. The answer is Ken Jennings' appearance on The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs. The question is, what is the most entertaining listening experience? in podcast land. Jeopardy truthers who say that you were given all the answers believe in... I guess they would be conspiracy theorists.

That's right. Are there Jeopardy truthers? Are there people who say that it was rigged? Yeah, ever since I was first on, people are like, they gave you the answers, right? And then there's the other ones which are like, they gave you the answers and you still blew it. Don't miss Jeopardy legend Ken Jennings on our special game show week. of The Puzzler podcast. The Puzzler is the best place

to get your daily word puzzle fix. Listen on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Adventure should never come with a pause button. Remember the movie pass era? Where you could watch all the movies you wanted for just $9? It made zero cents and I could not stop thinking about it.

I'm Bridget Todd. Host of the tech podcast, there are no girls on the internet. On this new season, I'm talking to the innovators who are left out of the tech headlines. Like the visionary behind a movie pass, black founder Stacey Spikes, who was pushed out of movie pass

the company that he founded. His story is wild and it's currently the subject of a juicy new HBO documentary. We dive into how culture connects us. When you go to France, or you go to England, or you go to Hong Kong,

those kids are wearing Jordans. They're wearing Kobe. shirt, they're watching Black Panther. And the challenges of being a Black founder. Close your eyes and tell me what a tech founder looks like. They're not going to describe someone who looks like me and they're not going to describe someone who looks like

you. I created There Are No Girls on the Internet because the future belongs to all of us. So listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet on the IHurt Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is where we'd left off with Haley Welch in our first series. It wasn't clear what the SEC investigation would yield, whether she would be made an example of,

or after the severe roller coaster in the public eye she'd had in 2024, maybe she would just cut her losses and pack it back into Tennessee. And the world, as the world does, continued. While Haley took what everyone joked was her nap. I'm going to go to bed, and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Outside of a Twitter post saying that she is completely cooperating with the SEC investigation, that's the last we hear from Haley Welch in 2024. But early in 2025, as Trump's second inauguration approaches,

something interesting happens. And by something interesting, I mean, something really embarrassing and very depressing. from January 17th, 2025. Three days before he took office, as Donald Trump was preparing for his inauguration, those close to him were also hard at work, launching a new cryptocurrency. I would not be surprised if you had already forgotten this happened. It was a thousand press cycles ago now, and it already feels very quaint compared to what the administration is currently doing. But Trump launched a meme coin.

I mean, crypto folks seem to agree that it was a lot. less sloppy pump and dump than a hawk coin, but that's not saying much. Coffee Zola can explain it better than I can. Trump just launched a meme coin. Uh, welcome back to the void. This is not how I wanted to start my 2025. Let me tell you that right now. Here's the tweet.

My new Donald Trump official meme is here. It's time to celebrate everything we stand for. Winning. Join my very special Trump community. Get your Trump. Now, go to get Trump memes.com. When you go there, you join the Trump meme, which is buying something and hoping it goes up in value.

The story within the story that a lot of people missed as Trump was launching a meme coin was that during the week of the inauguration, it seemed that virtually everyone in Trump's orbit was signing up for pump dot fun and trying to make their own meme coin. Even the pastor hired to speak at the inauguration. Pastor Lorenzo Sewell. Let's talk about him. He is from 180 church in West Detroit. The town's newspaper had a write-up on him via The Daily Beast.

Just hours after he delivered that speech for President Trump, Reverend Sewell announced the launch of his own crypto token dubbed Lorenzo. This one is nuts. You just, you have to laugh at this one. This is Pastor Lorenzo Sewell. and in this video, he is literally still wearing the outfit he just swore Trump in wearing. If nothing else, I've never seen someone so acutely aware that they have 12 minutes of relevance left. It's very funny.

I need to do me a favor right now. I need you to go by the official Lorenzo Seul coin. I want you to be able to see politics become manifest, not just in the way where we're praying. over political gatherings, but we were seeing us become the hands and the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. Would you help me? Would you help us in this endeavor? Would you go and purchase the coin in order for us to do what we need to do in the ministry? And with the state of the world being what it is, the Trump meme coin is very successful and basically prints money for him, leaving some of the world's most noxious internet personalities to praise him and essentially enter the Jake Paul's

School of Right Wing Grifting, as so many did in 2024, ruining the reputation of podcasts permanently. Oh no! Here's an example of someone doing just that. This is a 35-year-old man named Faye's Banks, who also pivoted to crypto and was investigated by the SEC for scamming crypto, who, I regret to inform you, becomes relevant to our story very shortly. hooted out of the face house and your life's falling apart, you're sleeping on an air mattress and fay's rugs calling you to check in every other day and adapt and Keemstar are your only friend. Got to get the fuck up and you've got to go do something.

You have to. So while some crypto speculators, including people who appeared on this show, seemed hopeful that the hawk coin scandal might mean that Doc Hollywood and company would be made an example of in one of the few pump and dump schemes to make it all the way to the national news, when Trump was in office doing literally the same thing as Hawk Coyne did a few weeks later, it became clear that there was no way that was going to happen.

And in the meantime, I, Jamie Lou Loft as your little host, along with producer Ian Johnson, was trying to see if there was a chance in hell that Haley's team would ever let us interview her for this show. And to everyone's shock, we actually received a. reply in January, and Haley's team appeared to consider coming on this show for two full weeks, which indicates to me that in terms of media strategy, they must have been really flying by the seat of their pants. But while the SEC investigation dragged on, it was also unclear whether Haley Welch was going to get out of this predicament with her business relationship with Jake Paul intact, which is a nice way of saying, whether Jake

Paul and company thought they could make any more money off of her. It seemed unlikely that Talk Tua was ever going to return on the Better Network. But I still didn't know why that was. This became clear in early February when news dropped that made it clear that not only had Team Hawk decided against engaging with my sorry ass, in spite of the fact that I bravely paid for their ugly uncomfortable hat, thank you very much, but this news also offered an explanation as to why the Jake Paul relationship fell apart. I present you the evidence. A leaked, unreleased episode of Talk Tua about the crypto scandal. right genius is evenly distributed opportunity is not it's black business month and black tech green

money is tapping in i'm will lucas spotlighting black founders investors and innovators building the future one idea at a time let's talk legacy tech and generational wealth i don't think any person of any gender race ethnicity should alter who they are especially on an intellectual level or a talent level to make someone else feel comfortable just because they are the majority in this situation and they need employment. So for me, I'm always going to be honest in saying that we need to be unapologetically ourselves. If that makes me a vocal CEO and people consider that rocking the boat, so be it.

To hear this and more on the power of black innovation and ownership, listen to Black Tech Green Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In sitcoms, when someone has a problem, they just blurt it out and move on. Well, I lost my job and my parakeet is missing. How is your day? But the real world is different. Managing life's challenges can be overwhelming.

So what do we do? We get support. The Huntsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council have mental health resources available for you at loveyourmindtay.org. That's loveyourmindtay.org. See how much further you can go when you take care of your mental health. Hello, puzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle.

The answer is Ken Jennings' appearance on the puzzler with A.J. Jacobs. The question is, what is the most entertaining listening experience in podcast land? Jeopardy truthers who say that you were given all the answers believe in... I guess they would be conspiracy theorists. That's right. Are there jeopardy truthers? Are there people who say that it was rigged? Yeah, ever since I was first on, people are like, they gave you the answers, right? And then there's the other ones which are like, they gave you the answers and you still blew it. Don't miss Jeopardy legend Ken Jennings on our special game show week of The Puzzler podcast.

The Puzzler is the best place to get your daily word puzzle fix. Listen on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Adventure should never come with a pause button. Remember the movie pass era where you could watch all the movies you wanted for just nine. It made zero cents, and I could not stop thinking about it. I'm Bridget Todd, host of the tech podcast, there are no girls on the internet. On this new season, I'm talking to the innovators who are left out of the tech headlines, like the visionary behind a movie pass, Black founder Stacey Spikes,

who was pushed out of Movie Pass, the company that he founded. His story is wild, and it's currently the subject of a juicy new HBO documentary. We dive into how culture connects us. When you go to France or you go to England, or you go to Hong Kong. Those kids are wearing Jordans. They're wearing Kobe's shirt. They're watching Black Panther.

And the challenges of being a Black founder. Close your eyes and tell me what a tech founder looks like. They're not going to describe someone who looks like me and they're not going to describe someone who looks like you. I created There Are No Girls on the Internet because the future belongs to all of us. So listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet on the IHurt Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So it's a little unclear exactly when this was filmed, but I would assume it was sometime in January 2025.

They are still on the Better Network talk to a set with guest, and I hate to say that he's back already. It is Faye's Banks. And, well, Fays Banks is a total scumbag who is fully in Jake Paul's orbit, his being chosen as the guest is not without reason. Because while he could at best be described as a crypto enthusiast who hasn't been under federal investigation in the last two calendar years,

Faye's Banks was actually on that famous Twitter Spaces press conference. The same press conference that Haleywalt said, Anywhoo, I'm going to go to bed. The same press conference. conference net coffee Zilla used to essentially take down the scam in the first place. He was there. Here's a clip of him from that moment, responding to one of the Hawkcoin crypto guys. Haley, I'm going to talk to you directly right now because if you really own 10% of the supply of

this token and it's locked up for a year and it's vested over three years, you got scammed harder than anybody involved. this 100% was a mismanaged, mislaunched. Like, this is, took what Coffee Zilla said, I would label this a scam as well. So in some ways, Faze Banks' initial criticism of the Hock coin scam could make Haley's team putting him on the show look like an attempt to make her seem like she's willing to engage with detractors. Of course, this isn't actually true.

phase banks is just another crypto guy. And like a lot of crypto guys, he was someone who was involved in any number of alternatively loserish or scary activities prior to being a crypto guy. Not only does he stem from the same generation of millennial influencer vloggers turned crypto dirtbags like Jake Paul,

Fays Banks also has a long-standing relationship, positive, and negative with the Paul brothers, including some romantic history, that I cannot commit to memory to save my life, and after getting into crypto, developed plenty of experience feigning neutral authority over some bullshit he's selling like crypto. And don't worry, he has been accused of assaulting a woman. He's a terrible person. So two things need to be true here, folks.

He is a scumbag. And he is the kind of guy who would be happy to publicly forgive a crypto scam because he's the kind of guy to do a crypto scam. The podcast episode starts like this. Hello, guys. I'm back with another episode to talk to and I'm here with banks. There he is. Has it going?

It's going good. Life's crazy right now. I don't know. I say no to every single fucking podcast. Ongoing joke on impulsive that I stood them up four or five times. This isn't necessarily my thing, but you're in an interesting position right now. and I feel like it's my duty to come on here and talk to you. You seem like a sweet enough girl, and I feel like I know more or less what happened with you.

We're going to get into all that. I brought a couple of crypto nerds with me. We're going to sit down and talk. Teach me. Yeah. Yeah, no, I feel good. How do you feel? I don't know.

I'm still a little shook up about it. And I was able to pull this audio from a re-upload of this interview. It's 40 minutes long. But technically, this was never formally released on the Talk to a YouTube channel. because it shouldn't have been released until after the SEC investigation was closed per an agreement that the Hawk team had with the Faye's Banks team. And at the time this was recorded and leaked, the SEC investigation was very much not over. According to Banks, and who wouldn't trust Faye's Banks,

Haley's team intentionally leaked this interview to get some sympathy and potentially to push and benefit from some insider training on the coin, assuming that the interview would be positively received in the public. I do believe that, but by February, the interview was out there, and Haley's team mysteriously didn't seem to have a vested interest in getting it offline. So I have seen this episode, and there are some things I want to share with you about it. The Approach Haley had no idea what was happening

It's all Doc Hollywood's fault And she is like So very sorry, please trust her again I'm gonna start by saying Thank you to all my true fans And all the people that actually watch my stuff And they keep up with me We're trying to sort out all the pieces and stuff

To like get all this figured out And make everything right Oh my God, I'm gonna cry It was supposed to be like a What I call it a Long-Term Coin And the guy that ran the account He was like, oh, we're going to change the way everybody thinks of crypto. Crypto is going to be a good place.

And I feel really bad for all the people that got affected by it. And it just didn't go the way I planned. And I know you're going to call me a sucker, but I do believe some of what Haley is expressing emotionally here. You don't have to care. But given that if you know about this young woman and I talked about and spent a lot of time with literally everything she said in the public in the previous series, this is the same person who locked herself inside for two weeks after going viral without giving her consent. And so the fact that Haley was mortified and scared after the Hock coin scandal does make sense to me. But regardless of what I felt was at least partial emotional sincerity on her part,

what's clear here is that this episode is going to be an attempt to retcon all of the bad press that this whole crypto scam is caused and intend to distance Haley from it. And again, as Faye's Banks later says, the episode was not to be released until he approved and the investigation was closed. And it's not just a roundabout apology-ish excuse for how everything went down. According to Faye's Banks and the three extremes, extremely random aging hype beast that he brought with him, they're still defending crypto. And they are encouraging Haley to do crypto the right way this time. It is nuts.

Basically what Frank just said in normal people terms is you take every dollar that you made on this and you mark it by this token. And you lock it up. You walk away from it. You don't ever see that money. You can never touch it again. And you say, I'm not going to, maybe I'm not going to talk about this every day, whatever, whatever. but I'm going to stand on business. I put my face on this.

I'm accepting responsibility that this happened. And hopefully, you know, everybody is made whole at some point where you guys do what you want with this at this point. This is me kind of like, you know what I mean? And what that does is it kind of shows your intentions, right? Like I just want I just want to do right by this and everybody who participated in this, et cetera. Throughout this, Haley is sitting there and nodding. But as the podcast continues, Bay's Banks and the random aging hype beasts are more talking to, to Haley's off-screen lawyer than her.

And it is very, very awkward to watch. They mention in the interview that Fays Banks spoke to Coffeezilla ahead of the interview and wants to present a number of questions that CoffeeZilla passed along. And I guess I'm glad that he spoke to an actual journalist, but this whole time Fays Banks is sort of posturing as if he is a journalist and not who he is. it just feels worth restating. I used that opportunity. I got investigated by the SEC for fucking like two years over this.

It cost me way more money than I made. It was one of the most miserable experiences in my life because that moment got me into crypto. Which leaves me with the question, what? But this is clearly a very softball interview that is also intended to push crypto. Bays Banks and the random guys are moralizing and the grift is strong. They have it both ways. They forgive Haley, as it were, on behalf of other crypto scammers who have gotten away with it and got better at scamming, I guess. And they're ostensibly asking her to get better at scamming for next time.

This is something that they describe as... Stand on business. There is a real menace about the phrase standing on business. Never trust someone who claims to stand on business. So while this interview is teeming with bullshit, the impression of the episode was that if it had been released as promised after the investigation closed and Faisbank's team approved it, both parties would have felt that it was mutually beneficial. But the episode quote unquote leaked and we'll get into what we mean by that. But before we knew anything about the circumstances of the leak, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Bays Banks, was sure what had happened.

He tweets. So in an attempt to hear Haley Welch's side of the crypto scam story, I agreed to do her first podcast back. I had heavy stipulations, including one, not allowing markets to be manipulated by leaking this episode's existence before a resolution was found. two, her team finding a real solution regarding the money she made, where that should go and what to do with the Hawk Project moving forward. These were non-starters, and we were told this episode would only ever see the light of day if we explicitly green-lit it. These incompetent, leaked, and or inside traded the token.

We noticed a random spike in volume on the coin, 2-2, along with random methods. asking us if we did the podcast. Very clearly, her team was not as solid as they claimed to be. They completely blew it, and we called the episode off right then and there. Now today, the episode randomly gets leaked. The price of Hawk is pumping, and they completely fucking fumbled the bag yet again. What a fucking mess. Poor girl. It's a wonder how she found herself in this position in the first place. Now, Haley Welch, I'm going to speak to you direct and say the exact same thing I said to you on spaces that night. Fire everybody.

Your team's fucking... The bleeps there are not swear words. They are in fact slur words. Fuck phase banks. But what really sticks out to me about this leaked episode isn't that this was the botched ending to an attempted apology tour, but that the Hawk toa team seemed so convinced that this was going to work, that not only did they have to weather accusations of insider trading, they also kept an ad they recorded for sports betting app GameTime inside of the leaked episode.

The apology was monetized. All right, you guys, I only got one sponsor left because there's some real ones and they've stuck with me since every bit of this started. Game time believes in me, y'all, and I believe. leaving them. Game time's more loyal than most of y'all's man's out here. Yeah, some of those guys just leave at the first opportunity they get. Not game time. So suffice it to say, the leak does not go well. And it's unsurprising that one of the first people to comment on this whole fiasco is CoffeeZilla. He releases a second and to date final video addressing the

Hawkcoin crypto scandal more or less right after all of this happens and the Facebook's is leaked. And he puts a lot of context about the leak and research he had been doing behind the scenes into the video. Hock to a girl's back with a released podcast that was immediately disavowed by nearly everyone in it who said, oh, we think there might have been insider trading involved. The podcast was not supposed to go live. They f***ed it up every step of the way.

They leaked the podcast and then they fucking posted it when it was supposed to be canceled. they f***ed up twice, and the third was the launch itself. Because CoffeeZilla is capable and willing to actually do research, there is a lot of useful information in this. First, that Faze Banks did reach out to Coffee Zilla. Imagine saying that to someone in 1782. But FaseBanks reached out to Coffee Zilla to see if he could pass along some of his questions. And apparently within the interview, Fays Banks tried to,

but none of them were answered to his satisfaction, or even appeared in the edited leak video that came out. And I would assume that the reason Fays Banks did that is because it turns out CoffeeZilla was Haley Welch's team's first choice for a returning guest on Talk Tua. Likely because having the sound clips of the person who most successfully blew up your crypto scam

coming onto your turf could have been a good look for her. her. But Coffeezilla, after being reached out to by Haley's lawyer, said no. He explains why here. I want to go through it because, yes, we do get mentioned in it, sort of as the boogeyman of crypto, we're going to get you. If you rug a coin, you know, we might come after you. Coffee Zilla got on there. That scary guy. Let me tell you, don't ever want to have a conversation with him. Whoa, don't ever want to have a conversation with me. Guys, I'm not intimidating. I don't know what's the problem here.

What he goes on to explain, and I'll link this video in the description because if I have to understand another crypto concept, my brain is going to start leaking out of my nose. But what Coffey-Zilla says is that he views both the leak and the content of the interview to be very insidious for a couple reasons. First, because as Faze Banks offensively explained, he and his three crypto musketeers were told that they would have to give the okay for the episode to be released and after they got wind of potential inside trading with Haley's team, they didn't want to release the episode

because I'll remind you just before this video was leaked it appeared that someone with insider information started re-inflating or pumping the value for hawk coin again assuming that the episode's release would increase its value. And even the likes of Faye's Banks knows it's a bad look to be within a country mile of insider trading quite that obvious. But what I find to be more interesting

for the purpose is of looking at Haley's predicament specifically is that Coffey-Zilla lays out how the victim narrative doesn't fit the situation when the facts are put together. So while, again, I do, believe the emotional sincerity and the upset that Haley is putting forth in this video. It doesn't seem like the math is mathing in terms of how much money did she actually receive. After receiving a leaked document, Kofi Zilla learned that Haley Welch's team, who claimed that

she had earned a relatively small upfront fee but wasn't cut into the millions of defrauded dollars in the scam had probably not been telling the truth about that. And when Coffey-Zilla confronted Haley's lawyer over DMs about this, the lawyer didn't even bother to deny it. So this literally drives me crazy. And then he goes, where is this from if you don't mind me asking? I say, well, it's an insider chat, allegedly between Doc and the team members. And then he says, you're right that as it stands, she may be entitled to whatever amounts.

However, she was supposed to have mutual approval on tokenomics, her not being. given the opportunity to approve the transaction fee staffs and pre-selled identities led to the end result. So literally he's admitting that he's been not telling the truth about how much money they stood to make. You're right. She may be entitled to millions of dollars from a scam. Like what?

And it's really saying something when Faye's banks technically ends up being on the right side of this by not wanting the podcast to be released. At the end of the day, it seems likely that Haley and her team may have made way more money off of the crypto scam than they originally admitted to and were evasive when asked to show paperwork by both phase banks and coffeezilla. So the allegations of insider trading ahead of the leak looks bad. And adding that to phase banks conceptually and an ad still mysteriously making it into a leak. video makes the whole attempt kind of transparent. But I've

got to hand it to her. Haley ends this episode the same way she would end any episode of Talk to A. I feel like it wouldn't be an episode I talked to if I didn't ask my last question. Do I ask it three times? I'll go around

the room. What's one move in bed that makes a woman go crazy? Unhinged way to end the apologizing for embedding Missing millions of dollars episode. No notes. And while this episode was not technically released, this leak gets a lot of attention.

People were waiting to hear what she was going to say after this scam, especially after Faye's Banks released that poetic rebuttal. Here are some headlines. Hayley Welch update. Hawk to a girl tearfully addresses crypto scandal in leaked podcast. Phase Banks calls out Haley Wells for Talk to a Girl. to a podcast controversy. Hawk to a girl, Haley Welch, and her lawyer,

explain meme coin dumpster fire. By the way, a number of these articles do not censor the R-word slur, but do go out of their way to make sure the reader knows that Faze Banks' job title is CEO of Faze Media, a subsidiary of Faze clan,

which cannot possibly be a real job. Anyways, CoffeeZilla's video On the second round of the Hocktua crypto scam receives around 4 million views to date. More than any individual episode of Talk Tua has ever gotten, I fear. Here's his conclusion on the situation. Haley Welch's team this whole time has been acting like so unbelievably dishonest in how they're framing all this to try to make her look like as sympathetic as possible instead of admitting, like actually we did have some complicity in this. Maybe we should have asked more questions.

We did stand to make way more money than we've let on in a lot of these interviews and with journalists. And again, I do have a lot of empathy for Haley at the time she was pulled into this predicament as I talked about at length in the first round of this series. And sure, Haley is being used as a pawn to some extent, but her whole business operation is willfully defrauding the public and then working overtime to deny it. and less confronted with irrefutable evidence. So even if Haley is just the face of that, the situation is really bad. So if the goal with this leak was to get some public goodwill around Haley, this did not work. And the team once again goes silent until March 25th, until after the second round of extremely negative press in two months died down.

But this period of silence does not last as long. Six weeks later, Haley posts to Instagram for the first time in months, with a genuinely bizarre short film? Breaking news, Haley Walsh was a shock to a girl. Has died. The Hock to a girl. No one knows finance quite like. Just two up.

Hey, Lee, get your ass up. We got stuffed in it. Ugh, okay, I will tell you what happened in that clip audio medium. It is captioned, what did I miss? And this is basically a TikTok sketch that sees Haley waking up from her nap, get it? And then dreaming about all of the different tabloid scenarios and rumors that circulated around her during this near, four-month absence from the public eye. We see her dreaming that she actually is pregnant, that she actually is in jail, that she

actually is dead, and it ends with her best friend Chelsea saying, we got shit to do, Egot. Commenters are split on this return, which remains consistent in her work going forward. Of course, there are a thousand versions of the same bed. she finally woke up from her nap joke. But there's also a lot of variety. Here are some examples. I already forgot about you, TBH.

You woke up. They can never make me hate you. Imagine running a crypto fraud scheme and then coming back three months later acting like it never happened. Yeah, a gradient of reaction. But what this post's very existence indicated to me, without saying it explicitly, was that the SEC investigation was probably over, and that Haley was cleared to post again, and most interestingly to me, this post tells us she still wants to be famous. But before we get there, let's close the book on the investigation, which is finally resolved on March 27, 2025. And you

won't believe what they decided. Hawk to a crypto update. U.S. SEC closes investigation, finds no evidence against Haley Welch. Haley Welch tells us, quote, For the past few months, I've been cooperating with all the authorities and attorneys, and finally, that work is complete. The SEC closed the investigation without making any findings against or seeking any monetary sanctions from Haley, said James Sala, Welch's attorney. Because they did not bring any action against her,

there are no restrictions on what she can do in regards to crypto or securities in the future. According to sources, Welch is looking to leave this episode behind her and is likely planning a documentary. They added that the 22-year-old won't venture into the cryptocurrency or meme coin projects anymore. And with that, they got away with it, leaving Haley Welch and her team to relaunch her career by, if this teaser was to be believed, any means necessary. And next time, on what I promise, is our first time, on what I promise is our first. final episode on the Hawk to a saga, we take a look at what came next, why this relaunch is not working and how the falloff lines up with so many who came before her. That's next time

on 16th Minute. 16th Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and I Hard Radio. It is written, hosted, and produced by me, Jamie Laughness. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad 13. Voice acting is from Grant Crater. And pet shoutouts to our dog producer Anderson, my cats flea and Casper, and my pet rock bird who will outlive us all. Bye. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth. Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced.

He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Black Business Month, and Money and Wealth podcast with John Hope Bryant is tapping in. breaking down how to build wealth, create opportunities, and move from surviving to thriving. It's time to talk about ownership, equity, and everything in between. Black and brown communities have historically been last in a lot. Let me just say this. AI is moving faster than civil rights legislation ever did.

Listen to Money and Wealth from the Black Effect Podcast Network on IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. It's Black Business Month and Black Tech Green Money is tapping in. I'm Will Lucas spotlighting black founders, investors, and innovators, building the future, one idea at a time. Let's talk legacy, tech, and generational wealth. I had the skill and I had the talent. I didn't have the opportunity. Yeah. We all know, right?

Genius is evenly distributed. Opportunity is not. To hear this and more on the power of black innovation and ownership, listen to Black Tech Green Money from the Black Effect podcast network on the Eyeheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When your car is making a strange noise, no matter what it is, you can't just pretend it's not happening. That's an interesting sound. It's like your mental health. If you're struggling and feeling overwhelmed, it's important to do something about it. It can be as simple as talking to someone, or just taking a deep, calming breath to ground yourself.

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