Weeks before crypto lender Genesis filed for bankruptcy, three former employees of the crypto giant claimed they had secured millions of dollars for a new crypto hedge fund, according to correspondence viewed by CNBC.

Matt Ballensweig, a former Genesis employee sent a message to a prospective investor in mid-December about what he called: Hunting Hill Digital. Ballensweig said he had secured $2.5 million from Bessemer Venture Partners at a $30 million post-money valuation. He added that he was in the process of raising an additional $5 million.  

Bessemer told CNBC in an email that they are not an investor in Hunting Hill Digital.

The fund’s “flagship product” would go live in the first quarter of 2023, the message said.

Genesis, which is owned by Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group, filed for bankruptcy protection on Thursday. The crypto behemoth was hit by the implosion of FTX in November. In its bankruptcy filing, Genesis listed over 100,000 creditors, with aggregate liabilities ranging from $1.2 billion to $11 billion dollars.

Gemini —a crypto exchange and major Genesis client — accused Ballensweig of falsely reassuring Gemini in July that Genesis was financially stable. Gemini claimed that Ballensweig told its representatives that Genesis had “capital to operate... for the long term,” according to court filings.

Ballensweig spent his final nine months at Genesis as managing director and co-head of trading and lending.

Ballensweig pitched the flagship product as an “alpha multistrat (delta neutral),” or a fund specializing in multi-strategy, low-risk, high-return investments. He added that the they would also launch two other beta products including a “Top 25 Index” and a “DeFi beta.”

“Think you’d be a valuable early partner,” Ballensweig said in his pitch.