Hex and PulseChain founder Richard Heart has been detained in Istanbul on an Interpol Red Notice, Turkish media report. The entrepreneur's legal name is Richard James Schueler. For holders of HEX, PLS and PLSX this is news about the person on whom all three projects depend.
What is known about the detention
Heart was detained together with his wife on Wednesday morning in an operation by Istanbul police and Turkey's National Intelligence Organization, MIT. Decrypt reports this, citing the IHA agency. Police had watched his address in the Beşiktaş district before the arrest.
The search turned up about a dozen mobile phones, several laptops, graphics cards, rifles, pistols, two drones, gold bracelets and a large amount of cash in different currencies.
What a Red Notice really means
A Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant. It is a request to law enforcement in all countries to find a person and provisionally detain them pending extradition or another legal procedure. Interpol issued the notice for Heart in 2024 at the request of Finland. It lists one charge: aggravated tax fraud. Finnish authorities have also sought him over an alleged assault. Daily Sabah described the case as tied to large-scale crypto fraud.
The long history with the SEC
Heart launched Hex in 2018 and marketed it as a high-yield "blockchain certificate of deposit." In 2023 the SEC charged him and three entities he controlled, Hex, PulseChain and PulseX, with unregistered offerings of crypto asset securities that raised more than $1 billion. The regulator also alleged he misappropriated at least $12 million of investor funds on luxury goods, from sports cars and watches to a 555-carat black diamond called The Enigma.
In February 2025 a federal judge dismissed the complaint for lack of jurisdiction, finding that Heart's activities were not clearly aimed at U.S. investors. The SEC declined to amend it by an April deadline, and the case ended. Heart's lawyer called it a complete victory.
What it could mean for token holders
The Finnish case is about taxes, not about how the networks run. PulseChain, built as a fork of Ethereum, keeps operating no matter where its founder is. But tokens tied to one figure react to news about that person's freedom, and the market prices that risk on its own.
The reports contain no data on price reaction, so what follows is only a list of factors to watch.
- Whether Finland demands extradition and how long the procedure in Turkey takes.
- Whether new charges appear that relate directly to the Hex and PulseChain projects.
- Whether the detention affects the team that develops the network.
Bottom line
Heart's case has moved from a U.S. courtroom to a European one, where the subject is taxes rather than securities. Final decisions depend on Turkey and Finland, and so far both sides are silent.
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