Haliey Welch Named In New Filing For Collapsed Solana Meme Coin Lawsuit

“Hawk Tuah” girl Haliey Welch has been named in a new filing for the existing class action lawsuit against the meme coin project she promoted last year. 

She was initially left out of the lawsuit, which was filed just weeks after the Solana-based token launched and subsequently collapsed.

Law Firm Asks Court If It Can Amend Its Complaint

Burwick Law, the firm behind the class action lawsuit, had previously said that it intentionally left Welch out of the case because it felt that it was the most effective way to make its clients whole. 

However, the law firm has now asked the court if it can amend its class action complaint to include her, as well as her manager Johnnie Fortster and her company 16 Minutes LLC as defendants. 

The law firm has also added new fraud allegations and is seeking an order to grant alternative ways to serve existing defendants, Clinton So and OverHere Limited, according to Court Listener. 

That’s after Welch said in a now-deleted X post that she was “fully cooperating” with Burwick Law to “uncover the truth” behind the token’s collapse.  

According to the filing, Welch’s company 16 Minutes LLC signed a “Meme Token Creation and Monetization Agreement” with Memetic Labs around five months before the token was launched. 

As part of that agreement, Welch had to promote the token across all of her social media channels in exchange for $125K upfront, and an additional $200K upon meeting certain promotional milestones. 

Those payments “transformed Welch from a passive celebrity into a critical component of a coordinated marketing funnel designed to draw in retail purchasers who trusted her,” Burwick Law said in the new filing.

Memetic Labs was also granted a 50% lifetime profit share tied to the token’s trading activity, according to the suit. 

HAWK Token Collapse Was No Accident

Welch rapidly rose to fame in 2024 after she participated in an unscripted interview in which she revealed her “hawk tuah” sexual technique. She then took advantage of the viral moment to launch a popular podcast. She also grew her online following into the millions.

Welch then took it a step further and launched the Hawk Tuah (HAWK) token, which she branded as a “transformational cultural token,” the new filing says. 

That token was meant to be integrated with Welch’s podcast to offer subscription-style benefits. However, Burwick Law’s suit claims that the token had none of the technical components needed to actually build this system.

While the token may not have had the technical components it claimed to have at the time, the meme coin still managed to soar to a market cap of $490 million within less than 15 minutes after it launched. Shortly thereafter, however, its price went on to collapse 93%.

HAWK token price (Source: DEX Screener)

According to data from DEX Screener, HAWK currently has a market cap of $1.7 million and is trading at $0.0001761 as of 5:28 a.m. EST. In the last 24 hours, the token has seen its price jump over 2%, but this seems to be a temporary breather from the downtrend the token has been in over the past few weeks. 

Burwick Law’s suit claims that the token’s collapse was no accident, and that the meme coin was designed to perform that way. The law firm added that insiders bought up substantial amounts of the token’s supply before dumping $1.27 million worth of the meme coin just minutes after it debuted in the market. 

“The pseudonymous wallets orchestrating the scam were not random actors,” the firm said, adding that on-chain forensics shows that the same wallet clusters took part in multiple other “rug pulls,” including “LIBRA, M3M3, AIAI, and the infamous TRUMP snipe.” 

“The timing patterns, funding flows, and extraction methods across these schemes are nearly identical,” the suit said.

The claims made in the new filing are purely allegations at this stage, and the court has not made its findings in this case.