That's pretty funny. Can you imagine?: "Steve Lewis? No, never heard of him, he owe you some money or something?"
From The Guardian, January 3:
A chief executive officer whose claimed qualifications appear to have no basis in fact was used to promote the HyperVerse crypto fund, alongside celebrity messages of support, as part of a push to recruit new investors into the scheme.
A Guardian Australia investigation last month revealed thousands of people have lost millions of dollars to the HyperVerse crypto scheme, which was promoted by the Australian entrepreneur Sam Lee and his business partner, Ryan Xu, two of the founders of the collapsed Australian bitcoin company Blockchain Global.
Blockchain Global owes creditors $58m and its liquidator has referred Xu and Lee to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for alleged possible breaches of the Corporations Act. Asic has said it does not intend to take action at this time.
The HyperVerse investment scheme is among those that appear to have escaped scrutiny in Australia despite being flagged by regulators overseas, by one as a possible “scam” and another as a “suspected pyramid scheme”.
Lee has denied HyperVerse was a scam and disputes being its founder. Guardian Australia has not been able to contact Xu for comment.
A man named Steven Reece Lewis was introduced as the chief executive officer of HyperVerse at an online global launch event in December 2021, with video messages of support from a clutch of celebrities released on Twitter the following month, including from the Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and actor Chuck Norris.
Promotional material released for HyperVerse, which was linked to a previous scheme called HyperFund, said Reece Lewis was a graduate of the University of Leeds and held a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge. A brief career summary of Reece Lewis, which was presented in a video launch for potential investors, said he had worked for Goldman Sachs, sold a web development company to Adobe and launched an IT start-up firm, before being recruited to head up HyperVerse by the HyperTech group. This was the umbrella organisation for a range of Hyper-branded crypto schemes....
....MUCH MORE
HyperVerse, a HyoerTech company. And Steve? Present in spirit.
Previously:
Web3 Is Going Just Great
Some of the recent stories at WIGJG:
December 16: "Top tier" NFTs stolen in NFT Trader hack:
Attackers exploited old smart contracts from the NFT Trader peer-to-peer NFT trading application to steal pricey NFTs, including at least 37 Bored Apes, 13 Mutant Apes, and NFTs from the VeeFriends and World of Women collections. Some ETH and APE tokens were also stolen. Altogether, the stolen NFTs are priced at around $3 million, though the hacker may not be able to liquidate them for that amount....MUCH MOREDecember 14: SafeMoon files for bankruptcy:
The company behind the SafeMoon cryptocurrency scam has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Screenshots circulated on Twitter of a letter to employees citing "a number of operational and financial challenges", likely referring to — oh, I don't know — maybe the whole criminal indictment against SafeMoon's founders and executives and simultaneous civil lawsuit from the SEC....MUCH MOREDecember 13: "Money launderers charged over $80 million crypto romance scam"
December 13: Australian victims lose estimated $1.3 billion to prolific scammers' HyperVerse project:
...Estimates by Chainalysis suggest that victims have lost a combined $1.3 billion (with a B)
And many, many MORE.
It's already hard to remember exactly how Steve looked, how he talked, his little smile, his twinkling eyes...
He bears a striking resemblance to Captain Jonathan Tuttle, M*A*S*H*, Season 1, Episode 15:
6'4," 195 lb. auburn-haired, hazel eyed
...I'll never forget him.
Our grief will pass.
It's already hard to remember exactly how Johnny looked, how he talked, his little laugh.
Thankfully he's left behind a memorial....
