HEX and PulseChain founder Richard Heart has reportedly been detained in Istanbul on October 14, 2026, during a joint Turkish police and intelligence operation, with authorities reportedly seizing $4 million in cash and 64 luxury watches from his residence.
Summary
- Turkish media reported Richard Heart detained in Istanbul during a coordinated police and intelligence operation.
- Reports described seizures of $4 million in cash and 64 luxury watches from his residence.
- Finnish authorities sought Heart over suspected aggravated tax fraud, with separate assault allegations previously reported.
- The SEC’s 2023 lawsuit alleged unregistered offerings exceeding $1 billion and misappropriation of investor funds.
- A federal judge dismissed the SEC case in February 2025, and regulators declined further amendments.
Turkish newspaper Sözcü reported that officers detained Richard Heart, whose legal name is Richard James Schueler, at a property in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş district. The operation reportedly involved Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization, known as MİT, and Istanbul police, following earlier efforts to locate him.
The reported detention follows a Finnish investigation into suspected tax fraud and an assault allegation. Heart previously faced a separate U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit involving more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency offerings, but that civil case ended in 2025.
Richard Heart detained as police seize cash and watches
According to Turkish accounts published Wednesday, investigators located Heart’s residence in Beşiktaş before carrying out an early morning operation.
Officers reportedly recovered approximately $4 million in cash, 64 luxury watches, electronic equipment and firearms from the property.
The reported inventory included mobile phones, laptop computers, graphics cards and other electronic devices. Another account described the recovery of drones and gold jewelry.
Local reports said investigators had placed Heart’s address under surveillance before the operation. Turkish intelligence personnel worked with police units responsible for financial crime investigations.
Sözcü attributed the operation to coordination involving the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, Turkish intelligence, Istanbul police and Interpol units.
The newspaper described Heart as a person wanted internationally and reported that investigators were examining suspected cryptocurrency fraud involving several countries.
However, the available reporting does not establish that Turkish prosecutors have filed a new criminal indictment against Richard Heart.
Neither an official Turkish charging document nor a court order confirming his continued detention was independently available in the materials reviewed.
The reported seizure figures therefore remain attributed to Turkish media. There is no independently verified inventory establishing the ownership or origin of the recovered property.
Previously, Richard Heart has displayed luxury watches publicly. In earlier social media posts, he claimed to own collections worth millions of dollars.
Why Finland issued an Interpol notice for Richard Heart
Richard Heart had been sought by Finnish authorities before the reported Istanbul operation.
In September 2024, Finnish police publicly disclosed an investigation into suspected aggravated tax fraud involving the cryptocurrency founder.
Finland’s public broadcaster Yle reported that investigators suspected Heart of failing to meet substantial tax obligations while living in Helsinki.
Detective Harri Saaristola said the investigation concerned activities carried out over an extended period. Police were examining income connected to cryptocurrency businesses that Heart allegedly developed and promoted while residing in Finland.
The suspected conduct covered several years, including the period between June 2020 and April 2024.
Finnish investigators alleged that Heart had failed to provide required business tax filings and omitted information from personal tax declarations.
Authorities described the suspected unpaid taxes as amounting to hundreds of millions of euros.
The figure was an investigative allegation, not a final tax judgment against Richard Heart.
Finnish police separately investigated an alleged assault involving a 16-year-old.
Information published through Europe’s most-wanted network described an accusation that Heart assaulted the teenager by pulling their hair, dragging them into a stairwell and striking them repeatedly.
The allegation has not been established through a conviction in the information reviewed.
In December 2024, Interpol issued a Red Notice at Finland’s request.
As covered in an earlier report on Richard Heart’s Interpol notice, the notice sought assistance from international law enforcement agencies in locating him.
Interpol explains that a Red Notice requests the location and provisional arrest of a wanted person pending extradition or another legal process.
A Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant. Individual countries decide how to respond under their national laws.
The publicly reported Red Notice identified aggravated tax fraud. The separate assault allegations appeared in reporting based on Finnish and European wanted-person records.
No official announcement reviewed for this article confirmed whether Finland has formally requested Heart’s extradition following the reported Turkish detention.
SEC accused Heart of raising over $1 billion through crypto
Richard Heart’s legal history includes a separate enforcement action brought by U.S. securities regulators.
On July 31, 2023, the SEC charged Heart and three cryptocurrency projects associated with him, HEX, PulseChain, and PulseX, with conducting unregistered securities offerings.
The regulator alleged that the offerings raised more than $1 billion in digital assets from investors.
Its complaint said Heart began promoting HEX in 2018 and marketed the token as a high-yield blockchain-based certificate of deposit.
According to the SEC, the HEX offering ran from December 2019 through November 2020 and involved more than 2.3 million ETH.
The agency accused Heart of promoting returns through a staking feature that he claimed could generate annual yields as high as 38%.
Regulators later examined fundraising arrangements connected to PulseChain and PulseX.
The SEC alleged that between July 2021 and March 2022, Heart conducted additional offerings that raised hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency.
Participants were encouraged to contribute assets through transactions described as sacrifices, with the expectation of receiving the projects’ native tokens.
The commission argued that describing the transfers as sacrifices did not remove the transactions from federal securities law.
Its allegations went beyond the failure to register securities offerings.
The regulator accused Richard Heart and PulseChain of misappropriating at least $12 million of investor funds to purchase luxury goods.
The purchases allegedly included expensive sports cars, watches and a 555-carat black diamond known as The Enigma.
According to the complaint, the diamond was purchased using proceeds allegedly connected to the PulseChain offering.
The SEC sought financial penalties, recovery of allegedly improper gains and court orders preventing further violations.
The allegations were civil securities claims. The SEC complaint was not a criminal conviction, and the U.S. court did not ultimately establish that Heart committed the alleged fraud.
Why the U.S. court dismissed the SEC lawsuit
Richard Heart challenged the SEC’s authority to pursue its claims, arguing that the agency had not established sufficient connections between the alleged transactions and the United States.
On February 28, 2025, U.S. District Judge Carol Bagley Amon granted his motion to dismiss the lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York.
The court ruled that the SEC had not adequately established personal jurisdiction over Heart.
Although he was a U.S. citizen, Heart was living in Finland during the relevant period.
The judge found that the complaint did not sufficiently demonstrate that his activities were specifically directed toward investors in the United States.
The SEC pointed to online promotional materials and participation by some U.S. residents. The court determined that those allegations were insufficient to establish the required connection with the country.
Judge Amon separately found that the complaint failed to adequately establish domestic transactions or conduct covered by the relevant U.S. securities laws.
The ruling did not determine whether HEX, PulseChain or PulseX were securities in every possible legal setting.
Nor did it establish whether the alleged misuse of investor money occurred.
The judge gave the SEC an opportunity to submit an amended complaint addressing the problems identified in the ruling.
On April 21, 2025, the SEC informed the court that it did not intend to file an amended complaint.
Richard Heart’s legal team confirmed the decision in a statement published April 23.
The lawyers described the outcome as a victory for their client.
Heart publicly celebrated the development, arguing that his cryptocurrency projects had prevailed against the regulator.
The earlier coverage of the SEC ending its Richard Heart lawsuit documented the decision not to amend the complaint.
The U.S. proceedings ended without a judgment establishing liability for the alleged securities violations or fraud.
Finland’s investigation remained a separate matter, unaffected by the dismissal of the American civil lawsuit.
HEX and PulseChain prices fall after detention reports
Cryptocurrency tokens associated with Richard Heart declined following the reports from Istanbul.
Market coverage published October 14 recorded HEX falling approximately 25% during the trading session.
The token was already trading far below its 2021 peak before the latest reports appeared.
PulseChain’s native token, PLS, experienced a sharper decline in some market snapshots, with reports placing its 24-hour loss between approximately 28% and 35%.
CoinGecko data showed a 28.14% daily fall and a 29.42% decline over seven days.
HEX was launched in 2019 as an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency offering a time-locking mechanism, while PulseChain launched in 2023 as a separate blockchain network.
PulseX operates within the PulseChain ecosystem as a decentralized exchange.
Their prices can be influenced by liquidity, overall cryptocurrency market conditions and developments involving the projects.
At the time of the October 14 reports, Turkish authorities had not publicly detailed an extradition timetable, a court hearing date or formal new charges against Heart.
The status of any Finnish extradition request, the treatment of the property reportedly seized in Istanbul and Heart’s subsequent custody arrangements remained unconfirmed in the official records reviewed.
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