Taylor Mathis Blames Awful Announcing for Getting Fired From DraftKings

"Walking Bets Girl" Taylor Mathis appeared on a Twitter Spaces hosted by sports bettor Elf (@yElff_) to discuss this past fall's promotion of a meme coin with her likeness.  People lost money.  Mathis insisted she did nothing wrong.

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Mathis was an influencer for DraftKings.  She confirmed DraftKings fired her through her agent the day after an Awful Announcing article made her bizarre crypto story viral.

From Awful Announcing:

Mathis sold her stake for 95 SOL (another cryptocurrency, with 95 tokens currently worth just over $16,000). She then sent messages saying she didn’t want to be involved in $TAYLOR any more. She posted on X that crypto wasn’t for her and that she would donate the money to charity. But her account then bought 34 million $TAYLOR tokens at a new low price of $9,000 (giving her almost 1.5 times her initial stake and a $7,000 profit), and she promoted that she was back in on the coin. That led to yet more people questioning if she was illegally manipulating the market, and to them tagging DraftKings, and to her locking down her account and removing DraftKings references from it.

Mathis appeared in a video shortly thereafter claiming she was not really involved, mentioned some type of threats and contemplated suicide.

She revealed: "I only reluctantly even 'played along' because they hacked my iCloud and threatened me and my family posting our home addresses sending videos with guns etc if I didn’t do things."

Taylor appeared to be in total despair by later that day.

"I honestly have never been in such a dark place in my life, I honestly want to kill myself.  I have made no oney (sic) off of this and all the false information out there is disgusting.  I don't know how people do this to people."

Mathis appeared on the Elf (@yElff_) Spaces broadcast along with podcaster Jeff Nadu, who previously worked at Barstool Sports.  Nadu has cast doubt on Mathis's claims that she was extorted.

824 people joined upon Taylor coming on, up from just over 200.   That number quickly shot to 3600 listeners by 10:11 pm

“For all intensive purposes to begin, I am going to say what I am going to say.  End of day, people are going to believe what they are going to believe," Mathis began.

“I don’t know why people hate me so much.

“Add (Nadu) to the list.

“I don’t know if I want to explain everything”

DraftKings was a listener on the broadcast, we should note.

“I’ve been very much advised not to say anything," Mathis said in regard to the meme coin.

Nadu broke in.  “Why did you bring it up in the first place?

“People lost money,” he added.

“(There is) No proof you were extorted.”

“I literally DM’d you the proof,” Taylor shot back.

She continued: “I was at Monday night football game, I came back onto Twitter the next day and a whole lot of people following me in crypto space - they are all saying there is this crypto influencer putting me on their discord stuff.  

“A couple days go by.  They - people in crypto community -  began spamming me stuff with little gifs with my name attached to some coin.  I don’t know anything about stocks or crypto.

“My name, my image was used on some coin to trade on Solana.  I had no idea what was going on.  Crypto influencers messaging me with my person info - sister, brother-in-law, their children, my parents, pics of people with guns.

“I was freaked out.  This is just really creepy.  Everybody has all my info and photos I wouldn’t want people to see.

“Couple of these crypto influencers messaged me together.  They say they are big in this space.  They told me to go on and make a wallet and they are going to send you some of the coin because it has your face on it.

“I make the wallet and they send me the coin.  They are pressuring me to do stuff with the coin.  I didn’t want anything to do with this.

“They wanted me to come on Spaces and talk about crypto.  I don’t know anything about crypto.

“Five days later, they kept trying to get me to do these spaces.  I sent a voice mail.  'I don’t want to get involved in this. All of you guys seem like good people' - clearly I was wrong about that - Then I said I hope this goes well.

“I sold it.  I didn’t know they didn’t want me to do this.  I bought the coin back and it is just sitting there.”

“I think it came out to $7000,” the money made from the coin.

“The crypto community came at me harder.  That’s the extent of it.”

Nadu then asked why she is still not working with DraftKings as they listened in.

“Why not call the FBI?” Nadu asks.

“Oh COME ON!” She shouted.

“You said you were extorted,” Nadu said.

“You thought your life was at risk,” he added.

“I’ve been through a lot of other things on the internet," Mathis explained.  "When it comes to anything cyber related they (the cops) don’t do anything.”

Taylor said she spoke to an attorney.  The attorney said she did not do anything wrong in regards to any claims she pumped and dumped the crypto.

Nadu then asked: “What do you say to people who lost money in this scam?”

“I feel bad for them, I didn’t tell them to go buy it," she responded.  "I donated the Solano $8000 to St. Jude’s.  I wasn’t part of this master plan.  For the record, when I sold the coin, they were all selling it first.  Then I sold the coin.”

Nadu responded: “You promoted the coin.  So why not?"

It was then that Taylor claims Awful Announcing did not reach out to her before writing their article that she says resulted in her being fired.

Nadu then asked: “If you were totally innocent, why did you think you were fired?"

Taylor said when everything happened DraftKings was 100 percent behind her. coming up with a PR plan on the first day.  Next morning, they changed their mind due to the Awful Announcing article, she claimed. 

"They were worried it would affect their stock price.”

Nadu lashed out:  “I don’t believe you for a second.  If you were ever extorted you would not go on Twitter.”

Taylor responded:  “You don’t do anything except talk about me on Twitter.”

Nadu said:  “You came at me on Twitter.  You are basically saying you were extorted.”

Taylor responded by saying she "did not really think I was extorted.  I didn’t feel very comfortable they had my family’s information.”

So what does Jeff Nadu think really happened?

“I think you did what you did and got what you wanted out of it.  There is no company that is loyal to you (that would fire you)," he added.

Taylor again reiterated that "nobody ever talked to me from that company.  It went through my agent.  He was told by them that, because they were a publicly traded company it could drive down their stock price.”

Taylor “As a woman I do not want to talk about (what I have done since).

What would she have done differently?

Taylor “I would have just ignored it.”

A self-proclaimed crypto expert that Taylor noted she had blocked on her Twitter feed, offered this….

“Everything can be seen on the blockchain.  You commented on his post, then you bought back in.

“You didn’t buy it back right away.

Taylor said “I bought it back within an hour.”

The crypto expert: “Then you started shilling it (the coin)”.

Sports bettor Brian Smith also chimed in: “You were promoting it”

Taylor (choking up a bit) “I would never steal money from people.  I try to run a toy drive through social media.  I try to help people out.”

One angry listener said he wasn't buying her story, added a few choice words, and Mathis signed off.

Watch for Elff_'s Twitter Space broadcast coming soon.