Turkey's justice minister confirmed an arrest on Oct. 17, 2026. Akın Gürlek said police held Richard Heart, the founder of HEX, since Oct. 141. Heart's legal name is Richard James Schueler. Officers searched 15 addresses across Istanbul. They found $7.15 million in cash and six cold wallets. HEX's price fell fast once the confirmation spread. The token traded near $0.0006 at 05:18 UTC on Oct. 18, 2026, CoinGecko showed, down roughly 14% from a day earlier, The Block reported8. Regulators first raised a similar fraud question in New York three years ago3.
Who Police Picked Up in Beşiktaş
Istanbul police moved on Oct. 14, 2026. They detained Heart at a property in the city's Beşiktaş district12. His wife was held alongside him. Officers picked up three more people after that first sweep. Those three worked as Heart's bodyguards.
The arrest ran on an old international order. Finland asked Interpol for a Red Notice in December 202414. A Red Notice is a request that every member country find and hold a wanted person until the requesting nation can act. Turkey acted on that same request almost two years later.
Istanbul's chief prosecutor ran the operation1. City police intelligence units joined the raid. Turkey's intelligence agency, MİT, backed them up.
Heart holds US citizenship, and he lived in Finland for years before this week4. That residency put his finances inside Finnish tax law, the same law at the center of his warrant.
Video built his following, rather than paperwork. He marketed Hex as a blockchain alternative to a bank certificate of deposit, with annual returns he put as high as 38 percent3. His own marketing used the word "sacrifice" where most projects say "invest". That word choice later became part of the SEC's case against him, since it described the same transaction a security law covers.
Both sides, in their own words
Does a confirmed arrest finally settle three years of fraud claims against HEX's own founder?
“Heart called on investors to buy crypto asset securities in offerings that he failed to register. He then defrauded those investors by spending some of their crypto assets on exorbitant luxury goods”
“That brings the case to an end with a complete victory for Mr. Heart. To my knowledge, this is the only SEC enforcement action against a participant in the cryptocurrency industry that was dismissed in its entirety by a federal judge”
Three Years of Allegations Catch Up With Him
The claims against Heart start years earlier than this week. Regulators at the SEC sued him on July 31, 20233. They said he raised more than $1 billion through unregistered crypto securities across Hex, PulseChain, and PulseX. The agency also accused him of spending at least $12 million of that money on sports cars, watches, and a 555-carat black diamond.
Hex itself ran as an offering from December 2019 through November 20203. The PLS and PLSX offerings followed, from July 2021 through March 2022, each one raising hundreds of millions on its own.
Eric Werner ran the SEC's Fort Worth Regional Office at the time3. He laid out the agency's case in plain terms. “Heart called on investors to buy crypto asset securities in offerings that he failed to register. He then defrauded those investors by spending some of their crypto assets on exorbitant luxury goods,” Werner said.
Finland built a separate case on different ground. Investigators there opened a tax fraud probe covering 2020 through 20244. The amount in question ran into hundreds of millions of euros in unpaid taxes. A second Finnish inquiry examined an alleged assault tied to a 16-year-old.
Detective Harri Saaristola worked the tax case for Finnish police4. He kept his public comment short. The investigation, he said, "concerned activities carried out over an extended period".
Those two cases sat in separate courtrooms. The SEC's complaint ran through New York. Finland's case stayed with Helsinki prosecutors4. Only the Finnish one followed Heart to Istanbul1.
The Case That Already Ended in Heart's Favor
One of those two cases already closed, and it closed against the government. Judge Carol Bagley Amon sits on the federal bench in Brooklyn5. The case ran under docket number 23-cv-05749 in the Eastern District of New York9. Amon dismissed the SEC's complaint on Feb. 28, 2025. Her reasoning turned on jurisdiction. Heart's offerings, the ruling found, skipped targeting investors inside the United States.
The SEC had a deadline to try again, and it let that deadline pass on April 21, 20255. David Kirk represented Heart as a partner at Kirk & Ingram LLP. He called the result total. “That brings the case to an end with a complete victory for Mr. Heart. To my knowledge, this is the only SEC enforcement action against a participant in the cryptocurrency industry that was dismissed in its entirety by a federal judge,” Kirk said.
Heart marked the moment on his own account. “Richard Heart, PulseChain, PulseX, and HEX have defeated the SEC completely and have achieved regulatory clarity that nearly no other coins have,” he wrote on X6.
Heart's SEC case and Finland's warrant converged in a confirmed Oct. 17 arrest
Dated steps in the SEC's US case and Finland's Interpol Red Notice against Richard Heart
Read the chart as a table
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| July 31, 2023 | SEC sues Heart. The SEC charges Heart, Hex, PulseChain and PulseX with raising over $1 billion in unregistered securities |
| Dec. 2024 | Finland seeks Red Notice. Finland asks Interpol to find and hold Heart over a tax fraud probe |
| Feb. 28, 2025 | Judge dismisses SEC case. Judge Carol Bagley Amon dismisses the SEC's complaint on jurisdiction grounds |
| April 21, 2025 | SEC lets deadline pass. The SEC declines to file an amended complaint, ending the US case |
| Oct. 14, 2026 | Heart detained in Turkey. Istanbul police detain Heart and his wife on the Finnish Red Notice |
| Oct. 17, 2026 | Turkey confirms arrest. Justice Minister Akın Gürlek confirms the arrest and the raid's cash and wallet count |
A dismissal on jurisdiction differs from a finding of innocence. Judge Amon's ruling skipped any verdict on the underlying claims5. The case stopped before it reached that question. Reach was the order's only subject, apart from guilt or innocence. A separate forum would need to take up the extraterritorial question before the SEC's claims could ever reach a verdict. Finland's warrant raises a claim the US case left untested, and a confirmed arrest settles custody alone, zero more.
The Raid's Numbers Keep Climbing
Early reports undercounted the raid. CoinDesk cited Turkish media on Oct. 15, 2026, and put the cash figure at $4 million2. Police had offered zero confirmation of their own at that point.
Gürlek's numbers landed two days later, and they ran higher. He put the cash at $7.15 million, with six cold wallets inside the same addresses1. Searches covered 15 locations across three Istanbul districts. Officers also logged 28 watches, 97 pieces of jewelry, and nine vehicles registered to Heart's wife. The haul also included four long-barreled rifles, three unlicensed pistols, and 1,400 rounds of ammunition.
Turkey's confirmed tally nearly doubled the first report, to $7.15 million, on Oct. 17
Cash seized in Istanbul raids tied to Richard Heart, before and after Turkey's confirmation
- Confirmed total: $7.15M
- First report: $4M
Sources: The Block [1]; CoinDesk [2].
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| First report | $4M | CoinDesk's initial report, citing Turkish media, before police confirmed a figure |
| Confirmed total | $7.15M |
The inventory echoes an older complaint. Regulators once pointed to watches and a diamond as proof of misspent investor money3. Police in Istanbul found 28 more watches in this raid alone1.
Heart's other two tokens fell harder than HEX on the first reports. PulseChain's PLS token dropped between 28 and 35 percent after the initial detention story broke on Oct. 15, 2026, crypto.news found4. Both tokens trade on the PulseChain network Heart launched in May 2023.
HEX traders followed the confirmed version more closely than the first reports. The token's decline sharpened the day after Gürlek's post1. A 14% drop followed within 24 hours of the confirmation, The Block reported. HEX traded at $0.0006 by 05:18 UTC on Oct. 18, 2026, CoinGecko's own page showed8. Gürlek's post itself pulled 2,518 likes and 1,047 replies, counted as of 05:10 UTC the same day7.
By the numbers
- $7.15 million: cash police seized across 15 Istanbul addresses, Turkey's Justice Ministry said Oct. 17, 20261.
- 6: cold wallets found in the same searches1.
- $4 million: the cash figure in the first, unconfirmed reports from Oct. 15, 2026, before police confirmed a higher count2.
- $1 billion: raised across Hex, PulseChain, and PulseX combined, the SEC said in its 2023 complaint3.
- $12 million: the minimum the SEC said Heart misappropriated for luxury goods3.
- 14%: HEX's price decline in the 24 hours after the confirmed arrest, The Block reported1.
- $0.0006: that price, at 05:18 UTC on Oct. 18, 2026, CoinGecko showed8.
- 2,518: likes on Gürlek's X post confirming the arrest, counted as of 05:10 UTC on Oct. 18, 20267.
What to watch
Watch Turkey's courts for the first scheduled extradition hearing. An extradition hearing carries zero date on the calendar so far2. Watch Finland's prosecutors for formal charges, the step that would finally test the tax fraud claim in open court. A plain statement from Heart's own account would show whether he answers these new claims the way he answered the SEC's.
Sources
- Zack Abrams, "Turkey Confirms Hex Founder Richard Heart's Arrest, Says Police Seized $7.15 Million and Six Cold Wallets," The Block, Oct. 17, 2026, https://www.theblock.co/news/regulation/2026-10-17-turkey-confirms-hex-founder-richard-hearts-arrest-says-police-seized-7-15-million-and-six-cold-wallets-418852
- Olivier Acuna, "Hex founder Richard Heart arrested in Istanbul on Finnish Interpol Red Notice," CoinDesk, Oct. 15, 2026, https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2026/10/15/hex-founder-richard-heart-arrested-in-istanbul-turkish-media-report
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, "SEC Charges Richard Heart and His Three Unincorporated Businesses Raising More Than $1 Billion in Unregistered Crypto Asset Securities Offerings," July 31, 2023, https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-143
- Olivia Stephanie, "Richard Heart arrested in Istanbul: What are the charges?" crypto.news, Oct. 15, 2026, https://crypto.news/richard-heart-arrested-in-istanbul/
- Sam Reynolds, "'A Complete Victory for Richard Heart': SEC Walks Away From Case Against HEX Founder," CoinDesk, April 23, 2025, https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2025/04/23/sec-walks-away-from-case-against-hex-founder-richard-heart-attorney-says
- Martin Young, "SEC says it won't re-file fraud case against Hex's Richard Heart," Cointelegraph, April 23, 2025, https://cointelegraph.com/news/sec-wont-retry-fraud-case-against-hex-richard-heart
- Akın Gürlek (@abakingurlek), post on X, Oct. 17, 2026, https://x.com/abakingurlek/status/2111340326115831858
- CoinGecko, "HEX price," retrieved Oct. 18, 2026, https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/hex
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, "Richard J. Schueler a/k/a Richard Heart, Hex, PulseChain, and PulseX," Litigation Release No. 25794, July 31, 2023, https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releases/lr-25794