Australian HyperVerse Founder Shills New Project Hours After SEC Charges

Australian HyperVerse Founder Shills New Project Hours After SEC Charges.

Hustler’s gonna hustle – at least, that’s what Aussie Sam Lee would have you think. The founder of alleged Ponzi scheme and failed rewards program HyperVerse has launched his new crypto project…literal hours after being charged with misusing USD $1.9B (AUD $2.85B) of investor’s funds. Despite all of the legal issues surrounding Lee, he’s remained active in the social media sphere, appearing in several interviews with outlets like The Guardian. It gives off similar vibes to when SBF went on an interview spree in the immediate aftermath of FTX’s demise – with Lee facing up to five years in jail.

New Venture Eerily Similar to HyperVerse Scheme

Despite constantly espousing his innocence with text messages to the Aussie media, it appears the structure of Lee’s new project is almost identical to the HyperVerse business model. Lee made an appearance during an event called VEND, where entrepreneurs were able to pitch their new projects to prospective investors. Viewers were rewarded for simply watching, but would also receive compensation if they subscribed (invested) to an idea.

Lee, in partnership with Mahmoud Elawa, was attached to one project in particular, called 369 Era. The new business venture offered users a subscription package where they could theoretically turn 27,000 USDT into 162,000 USDT, equal to 500% gains. Sound familiar?

The now-defunct HyperVerse platform allowed its customers to “subscribe” to plans that would generate 0.5% in daily returns through “mining operations”. In reality, the mining operations did not exist and investors were initially paid back via subscriptions from new customers. But as the new customers dried up, HyperVerse paused withdrawals, ran out of money and “went bankrupt”. To cap it all off, the company also had a fake CEO.

According to Sam Lee and Mahmoud Elawa, the new project will generate money via advertisement revenue. However, their presentation failed to mention which advertisers the team were aligning with, or how they would actually pay out customers.

To be clear, we’re not saying for sure that this new venture from Sam Lee is a scam. Perhaps there are a handful of willing advertisers ready to take the crypto world by storm. But from the outside, it is a literal minefield of red flags that would turn most experienced investors running very far away. 

How does the saying go? If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck…