The shadowy group behind “Hawk Tuah” girl Haliey Welch’s meme coin – which crashed hours after its launch – has been sued by investors for failing to register the cryptocurrency, according to court documents filed Thursday.

The coin was inspired by Welch, 22, who found internet fame earlier this year after making a lewd comment in a viral TikTok video. Since then, she’s capitalized on her newfound fame with custom merchandise and the Talk Tuah podcast.

The lawsuit alleges that the Cayman Islands-based sellers, as well as the promoters behind the “$HAWK token,” used Welch’s fame to falsely promote the meme coin as a registered security.

Welch had eagerly announced the launch of the meme coin on her podcast and to her 2.6 million Instagram followers.

The lawsuit was filed in the First U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York under the name Tuah The Moon Foundation; overHere Ltd and its founder Clinton So, who launched the coin; and social media influencer Alex Larson Schultz, also known as Doc Hollywood, as defendants.

Welch was not named in the lawsuit.

The coin reached a market cap of $490 million shortly after its launch on December 4th – but plunged more than 90% to less than $100 million within hours.

A presale of the coin raised about $2.8 million before the launch date, with a value of $16.69 million, plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.

Investors said they lost more than $151,000.

The day after the coin’s tumultuous launch, So made the Tuah Foundation an offshore company and sold 17% of the tokens through the foundation to a group of people to evade securities laws, the complaint says.

But the sellers behind the coin continued to advertise the remaining 83% of the tokens and made “no serious attempt” to ensure that buyers of the coins were outside the United States, the lawsuit says.

“The project was clearly intended to take advantage of the American market,” the complaint states.

So the plaintiffs said “literally, the token holders would essentially be shareholders.”

However, according to the lawsuit, the $HAWK token was never registered as security by the defendants.

“We have been extremely transparent about the limited scope and scope of our involvement in the Hawk Tuah token project,” an overHere spokesperson told Bloomberg. “We are confident we did nothing wrong.”

Although the coin bears its “Hawk Tuah” trademark, there has been radio silence regarding Welch’s controversy. She has not posted anything on her social media or uploaded a new podcast episode since the coin crashed.

Welch did not immediately respond to a request for comment.