For several years, there has been a legend circulating on social networks that Stephen Rhys Lewis, the head of the recently bankrupt cryptocurrency fund HyperVerse, is a “fake person” who does not really exist. An investigation by The Guardian seems to have confirmed this: none of the organizations on his resume have records of him.
It appears that all of Rhys Lewis’ professional credentials have been falsified in order to attract investors to HyperVerse. After the HyperVerse disaster, which worked as a pyramid scheme, the company suspended withdrawals. Customer losses could exceed $1 billion.
The Guardian found that none of the universities that Rhys Lewis allegedly attended (University of Leeds and Cambridge) had a record of him in their databases.
In a December 2021 video, Rhys Lewis was introduced as a CEO and seasoned executive who worked at Goldman Sachs and sold a web development company to Adobe before launching his own IT startup. However, Adobe has no record of any acquisition of the company owned by Stephen Rhys Lewis. Goldman Sachs could find no record of Rhys Lewis working for it.
The publication found no LinkedIn account for Lewis, and no Internet presence at all, other than HyperVerse promotional material. It turns out that Rhys Lewis’ Twitter account was only created a month before the video’s 2021 release.
Celebrities and influencers, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, have publicly endorsed Rhys Lewis. HyperVerse promised to create a virtual reality environment similar to what Meta created. Wozniak supported Steven in the video: “I can’t wait for HyperVerse to launch.”
In 2022, The Mirror noted that all three celebrities (Wozniak, Chuck Norris and Lance Bass) who allegedly endorsed Rhys Lewis refused to confirm that they knew him. Influencers and other HyperVerse leaders are also tight-lipped about the identity of Rhys Lewis. None of them confirmed that they had met or spoken to him. The Guardian speculates that everyone involved was simply used to make the video.
Where reality ends and imagination begins…#Hyperverse, The Metaverse city pic.twitter.com/9LsTwRFLCb
— Steven Reece Lewis (@stevenr_lewis) December 14, 2021
Stephen Rhys Lewis stopped tweeting in June 2022 – around the time HyperVerse stopped withdrawing funds. The pinned tweet includes a promo video captioned “Where reality ends and imagination begins.”
Sources: The Guardian, Ars Technica
