Losses of millions of dollars are a hard enough blow. But in recent days, many investors whose money was lost have received even more bitter news: they have no one to blame for, since the CEO of the company in which they invested does not exist at all.
The company in question is the HyperVerse crypto fund, promoted by Australian entrepreneur Sam Lee and his business partner Ryan Shaw, founders of Blockchain Global, which collapsed last month with $58 million in debt to creditors, and apparently over $<> billion to investors. Both Xu and Lee face possible regulatory action — but now it turns out that the person most prominent in all the emerging fraud is a fictional figure.
HyperVerse CEO Stephen Rhys Lewis has been the dominant figure in the company's marketing materials, including photos and videos of him talking and presenting the venture to potential investors. But after the collapse of the venture, the Australian newspaper The Guardian discovered that his entire resume was made up.
According to HyperVerse materials, Rhys Lewis is a graduate of the University of Leeds; He holds an MA from Cambridge University; worked at Goldman Sachs Investment Company; founded a web development startup that was sold in an "exit" to Adobe; And then founded another startup in the field of information services. However, the Guardian found that there was no record of either of these things: that name doesn't appear at either university, Goldman Sachs couldn't find a record of an employee with that name, and Adobe never bought a company from a person with that name.
Beyond that, Reese Lewis has no online presence—other than a Twitter profile that opened a month before he began promoting HyperVerse, and the project's marketing material.
The paper notes that some countries suspected the project from day one and branded it a pyramid scheme – but in Australia, where regulation of crypto is less tight at the moment, it managed to operate without any hindrance. This case raises concerns that other crypto investment ventures active in the country will also be found to be scams.
But the nonexistent CEO, who was apparently an actor who built a fictional character to protect himself when the fraud became clear, isn't the only one investors are furious about; HyperVerse marketed itself through recommendation videos from celebrities, including Chuck Norris, Apple founder Steve Wozniak, and more. Now it turns out that these celebrities not only didn't invest in the venture but didn't even know what it was about – their recommendations were obtained through a service called Cameo, which mediates between celebrities and people who want to pay them to record congratulatory messages for a bar mitzvah, for example.
Needless to say, familiar faces don't guarantee the credibility of a crypto venture; Top celebrities — including Kim Kardashian, football player Tom Brady and his ex-wife Giselle, boxer Floyd Mayweather, YouTuber Jake Paul, late-night host Jimmy Fallon, actor Larry David and more — have been sued for promoting crypto investments that turned out to be fraudulent. It's always a good idea to check carefully what you're investing in, and also think twice about the amounts you're investing. It's never a good idea to invest all your savings – just amounts you can afford to lose without causing any real damage.
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