The actor who was set to play the CEO of the troubled and shady cryptocurrency hedge fund HyperVerse apologized last week after a YouTuber revealed his real identity.
Stephen Harrison, an Englishman currently living in Thailand, confirmed to The Guardian that HyperVerse has appointed Stephen Rhys-Lewis as CEO. Harrison told The Guardian he feels “deeply sorry” for HyperVerse investors who lost $1.3 billion after buying a cryptocurrency mining operation that promised “double or triple returns” but never existed.
One of the funds "can't be put in his pocket," Harrison said. Instead, he told the Guardian, he was paid $7,500 over nine months. He also received "a wool and cashmere suit, two dress shirts, two ties, and a pair of shoes" to play the CEO, The Guardian reported.
Harrison said he did not participate in HyperVerse's alleged scheme to lure investors with false promises of high returns.
“I feel sorry for these people,” Harrison said. “Because they believed in the idea in front of me and they believed in what I said, and God knows what those people lost. And that makes me feel bad.”
He also said he was "shocked" to learn that HyperVerse had falsified his credentials, telling investors that Harrison was a tech genius: He had earned prestigious certifications before working at Goldman Sachs and later sold his web development company to Adobe. IT startup owner.
Harrison said he only learned of the fake CV when The Guardian investigated and found that nothing on his CV had been verified.
“When I read that in court, I thought they seemed very educated,” Harrison told The Guardian.
He confirmed that he had a high school diploma, but his information “did not necessarily reach that level,” according to the HyperVerse website.
Advertising “They gave me a good picture, but they didn't tell me anything about it,” Harrison told The Guardian.
Employment as a fictitious CEO According to The Guardian, Harrison was working as a freelance sports presenter when a "friend of a friend" told him about the HyperVerse party.
Harrison signed the contract with Indonesian company Mass Focus Ltd. He said he would be hired as a "talent performer," The Guardian wrote. However, The Guardian was unable to find “any record of a company with that name in the Indonesian company registry.”
Harrison's agent allegedly told him that companies typically hire corporate "bidders" to "represent the company" and convinced him that HyperVerse was "legitimate."
Even after those confirmations, Harrison said he was still concerned that HyperVerse might be a “scam,” and he researched the company online, but ultimately decided “it was okay.”
“So I accepted,” Harrison told The Guardian.
Harrison said that his promotional videos as CEO of HyperVerse were filmed in "makeshift studios" in Bangkok. While filming the second video, he said he was asked to start using the fake name Steven Rees Lewis. When asked why the fictitious name was necessary, HyperVerse told him it "played a role."
His agent told him that he was "fine in the end" and that he "didn't go online or see Steven Rhys-Lewis" after that.
“I would watch YouTube occasionally while they were doing the show, but other than that I was away from the paper,” Harrison said.
For nine months, Harrison made videos portraying himself as the CEO of HyperVerse, often working for an hour or two a month.
There was also a Twitter account set up under the fictitious name Steven Rhys Lewis. The Guardian noted that Harrison's last payment date to HyperVerse "corresponds to the last date the Twitter account was active," but Harrison told the Guardian that he had "no control" over the account. As Harrison neared the end of his tenure as ghost director, he told The Guardian that he had "asked for his Twitter account to be shut down."
Harrison also told The Guardian that he "never contacted" HyperVerse executives Sam Lee and Ryan Hsu and only dealt with a local contact in Thailand.
A YouTuber has revealed the real identity of the fake CEO YouTube user Jack Gamble tracked down Harrison after The Guardian published an investigation that confirmed "the identity of Rhys Lewis cannot be verified."
Gamble posted a video on his YouTube channel, Nobody Privately Funded, in which he claims to have used Facebook and the PimEyes face detector to find Harrison's true identity.
Gamble's research began in PimEyes, where he searched for images of "Stephen Rhys Lewis" using images from HyperVerse promotional videos. This led to "numerous images" of the fake CEO appearing "drunk in the background of various nightclubs and bars in and around Bangkok," according to Gamble.
Enlarge / Screenshot of a video of Jack Gamble with Stephen Harrison as the fake CEO of HyperVerse posted on Gamble's Nothing Special Finance YouTube channel.
No one private financing | On YouTube
When none of these photos yielded any clues to the CEO's identity, Gamble began searching PimEyes for people shown with the CEO in the photo. This led Gamble to the YouTube account of another Thai man named Chris Moton.
Although Mouton's YouTube account has been inactive for years, Gamble was excited to learn that Mouton follows several YouTube channels dedicated to cryptocurrency. This hit Gamble like a red flag, and he took to Facebook to learn more about Moton.
On Facebook, Gamble found what he was looking for: a photo of Moton eating pizza with someone who looked very much like the CEO of HyperVerse.
Moton didn't tag Harrison, but that photo only got five likes, one of which was Harrison's.
"Shocked," Gamble said in the video, which ended with a call for law enforcement to investigate Harrison.
HyperVerse developer faces fees While it remains to be seen whether Harrison will face any consequences for his role as a fake HyperVerse director, a crackdown has begun on bad actors who make "fraudulent promotions" to lure HyperVerse investments, Court Watch reports.
Advertising The Internal Revenue Service said HyperVerse promoter Rodney Burton operated as part of a "network" of promoters who HyperVerse allegedly paid to rig the scheme. In the court filing reviewed by the probation court, the IRS also named two unidentified individuals as co-conspirators.
Burton, known as "Bitcoin Rodney," was arrested in Florida last Friday and is awaiting arraignment in Maryland on charges of "conspiracy to engage in and conduct an unlicensed money transmission business." To warn the goalkeeper
Burton's complaint has been temporarily closed until January 18 so he can learn more about the HyperVerse plot.
Harrison denies any involvement in ongoing HyperVerse activities. The Guardian wrote that unlike Burton, who was accused by Court Watch of recommending people invest in the HyperVerse, Harrison "did not openly ask for money or make any claims about potential profits" in his videos.
Harrison told The Guardian that "a solution will be found" to recover the lost funds from HyperVerse investors.
“I feel bad for these people, that's what I really feel,” Harrison said, adding, “I know it's hard to get money back from these people or anyone else, but I hope justice can be done for everyone. They can get to the truth.” Of which." "
After a video of him walking away from Harrison was released, Gamble told Ars that neither Harrison nor law enforcement had been contacted.
Gamble told Ars that Harrison's apology to investors seemed "hollow" and that his comments "would be laughably feigning ignorance if so many people weren't so offended."
"We have to believe that when he was hired to use a fake name, he could not have known that these people were criminals and that he was a CEO to attract investors," Gamble told Ars. "If he really cared about his victims, he would have revealed everything he knew about the scams and the other people involved," Gamble added.
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