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Tuah The Moon Foundation, OverHere Ltd, Clinton So, and Alex Larson Schultz are being sued by investors following the failure of Hailey Welch’s Hawk Tuah cryptocoin. This comes after the Solana-based meme coin, HAWK, crashed and lost most of its value in a matter of hours. Many have since filed complaints about the pump-and-dump scam with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The “$HAWK Token” was inspired by Hailey Welch, who shot to internet stardom after her Hawk Tuah video went viral across the internet. The lawsuit filed against the group alleged that they used Welch’s fame to falsely promote the meme coin as a registered security.
The lawsuit was filed against the Cayman Island-based sellers after the coin hit a $490 million market cap moments after its December 4 launch. The coin quickly tanked more than 90% to less than $100 million within hours.
According to The Post, investors lost over $151,000.
Hailey Welch herself was not named in the lawsuit; however, Alex Schultz, who also goes by the moniker of Doc Hollywood, is now a defendant. Bitcoin.com News reported that Schultz, who is also the son-in-law of Howie Mandel, acted as a crypto mentor to Welch and pushed for the launch of the meme coin. According to Mashable, Schulz “controlled all token decisions, fees, treasury.”
More about Alex Schultz as Hawk Tuah meme coin scandal leads to lawsuit
According to IMDb, Alex Schulz, best known as Doc Hollywood, is also a DJ, music producer, and songwriter. He joined the music industry alongside his friend Louie Rubio to produce music and host DJ parties. Their first hit was We Run LA, which topped the charts and went on to be played regularly on Ryan Seacrest’s Top 40 radio show.
Alex Schultz and Louie Rubio went on to join DJ Felli Fel to form their group, The Americanos, in 2015. They proceeded to sign with Interscope Records.
Following the launch of the $HAWK coin, the Tuah Foundation reportedly sold 17% of their tokens to a group of people to escape securities law, as per the legal complaint.
The lawsuit also said that despite the coins being sold, the sellers continued to promote the remaining 83% of them and made “no serious attempt” to ensure that the coins that were being purchased were out of the U.S. The complaint read:
“The project clearly was intended to take advantage of the American market.”
As the lawsuit came into being, an OverHere spokesperson said in a statement to Bloomberg:
“We have been extremely transparent about the limited scope and extent of our involvement in the Hawk Tuah token project. We are confident that we have done nothing wrong.”
Meanwhile, Hailey Welch and overHere addressed the Hawk Tuah crypto scandal on an X Spaces stream. When the former was asked about the same during the December 5 stream, Welch said:
“Hey guys! I hate to interrupt you, Nick, but hello there. Anywho, I’m gonna go to bed and I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
Alex Larson Schultz himself had not addressed the lawsuit at the time of writing this article.
