Hawk Tuah influencer says memecoin fallout 'traumatized' her

Hailey Welch, the social media influencer known as the “Hawk Tuah girl,” said the collapse of the HAWK memecoin she promoted in 2024 left her "traumatized." She told Andrew Callaghan of the Channel 5 YouTube channel, "I got talked into doing something that I didn't know anything about, really, but you've got to be really careful what you put your name on." Welch said she fully cooperated with a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe in 2025 that cleared her of wrongdoing and that she neither held funds from the memecoin launch nor had the technical expertise to create the token.

Her lawyer estimated retail investor losses at about $200,000, and Welch described receiving death threats and keeping a low profile for months as the episode affected her mental health: "I was starting to get death threats and everything else. People telling me I owe them all this money, and I'm like, 'I didn't do this.' ...

It's rough. It's one of those things where if you come out of the house, you put your head down." Not everyone accepted her account.

United States

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