The British actor and freelance TV presenter who was used to front the $1.3 billion HyperVerse crypto scam says he is “deeply sorry” and that he only received ~$5,000 and a new suit for the role.
In an interview with The Guardian, Bangkok-based Steven Harrison claimed he was offered the job through a friend of a friend and that he was unaware of the HyperVerse scam.
Harrison said he was suspicious of the company’s crypto link after he read his script but claimed that his agent, working for Mass Focus Ltd., reassured him that HyperVerse was legitimate. He told The Guardian that he researched the firm but found that “everything seemed OK, so I rolled with it.”
The job involved Harrison playing the part of fictional HyperVerse CEO Steven Reece Lewis, and helping to present the scheme’s launch on December 5, 2021. Harrison claims that he read the investigation published by The Guardian debunking ‘Reece Lewis’ and his impressive, albeit completely fabricated, resume after the event.
“When I read that in the papers, I was like, blooming heck, they make me sound so highly educated,” he told The Guardian. He said, “I never went online and checked about Steven Reece Lewis. I looked on YouTube occasionally, way back when they put the presentations up, but apart from that I was detached from this role.”
This alleged $1.3B crypto scam likely faked its own CEO
Read more: Who is Steve Harrison? The fake HyperVerse CEO unmasked
The HyperVerse scheme operated under the umbrella of the multi-faceted ‘Hyper’ brand. Its parent company, HyperTech, is run by Sam Lee and Ryan Xu, who was presented as “chairman” and “founder” of HyperTech during the launch event fronted by Harrison.
The firm promised high returns but was found to be a highly unregulated pyramid scheme that lost an estimated $1.3 billion in investor funds.
Harrison claims that he was paid 180,000 Thai baht ($5,130) for nine months of work and received a cashmere business suit, ties, a pair of shoes, and two shirts.
The presenter told The Guardian that he had “certainly not pocketed” any investor funds and that he feels deeply sorry for investors. “You know, it’s horrible for them. I just hope that there is some resolution.”
Crypto sleuth Nobody Special Finance was able to uncover Reece Lewis’s real identity using facial recognition technology and trawling his associates’ Facebook pages.
