HEX Founder Richard Heart Arrested in Istanbul on a Red Notice He Spent Years Dodging
What happened. Turkish police and intelligence officers detained Richard Heart — born Richard James Schueler, founder of the cryptocurrency projects HEX, PulseChain and PulseX — at a property in Istanbul's Beşiktaş district on October 14, 2026, according to Turkish media reports confirmed by CoinDesk, The Block and Yahoo News. He was held alongside his wife under an Interpol Red Notice that Finland issued in December 2024 over allegations of tax fraud and assault. Turkish outlets reported that officers seized roughly $4 million in cash, 64 luxury watches, firearms and electronic equipment from the property.
A case he thought he'd already won. Heart built his reputation — and a large share of his fortune — promoting HEX as "the first high-interest-bearing blockchain certificate of deposit," drawing both a massive following and years of fraud accusations from critics and regulators. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued him in 2023 over HEX, PulseChain and PulseX; in 2025 a federal judge dismissed the case, ruling the SEC lacked jurisdiction because the projects hadn't specifically targeted U.S. investors. Heart publicized the dismissal as vindication. It did nothing, however, to resolve the separate Finnish warrant that had been standing since the end of 2024 — and that is what caught up with him in Istanbul.
Why it matters beyond one arrest. Heart's case is becoming a reference point for how crypto founders manage — or fail to manage — legal exposure across multiple jurisdictions:
- Winning in one courtroom does not clear a founder's name globally: an SEC dismissal on jurisdictional grounds settled nothing about the Finnish allegations, which had an active Interpol Red Notice attached the entire time.
- Publicly framing a narrow, procedural win as full "vindication" can mislead investors and partners who don't track the fine print of international warrants — a reputational risk hiding behind a legal technicality.
- For a public figure who travels and does business internationally, an unresolved foreign warrant isn't background noise — it's a standing liability that can materialize with no warning, as it reportedly did here.
Sources: CoinDesk, The Block, Yahoo News, Protos.
A legal win on a technicality rarely closes the book on a founder's reputation — unresolved questions in one jurisdiction tend to resurface in another. CGS.GURU helps founders and companies map their full reputational and legal exposure before it becomes the story.
