I’m in an investing WhatsApp group with about 100 other punters, awaiting financial advice from Sebastian Hatherleigh. In pictures, Hatherleigh is about 60, bespectacled, and looks dapper in a navy suit and vermilion tie. He describes himself as a senior strategic adviser at a “global investment and asset management firm”.
He is, in truth, nothing of the sort. In fact, he’s nothing of any sort. Despite his substantial online presence — social media accounts, press releases, quotes in online publications — Sebastian Hatherleigh doesn’t appear to exist at all.
There is no digital record of him before 2025, his images seem AI-generated, and there is nothing to back up his claims that he studied at Columbia or worked at McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, or as a faculty member at Wharton business school — the last two confirming to me that he’d never been employed there. When I contacted him on Facebook, his account — registered in Nepal — was deleted.