Judge rejects SEC charges against HEX creator Richard Heart, who remains  on the run

A U.S. district court judge has thrown out the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) suit against Richard Schueler, also known as Richard Heart, according to news reports on Feb. 28. Judge Carol Bagley Amon said the charges against Heart are not tied to the United States.

Heart is the creator of the HEX token, the PulseX asset trading platform and the PulseChain blockchain. The SEC filed a suit against him in July 2023, alleging the three tokens — Hex (HEX), PulseChain (PLS) and PulseX (PSLX) — were unregistered securities and that Heart spent $12.1 million of investor money on sports cars, Rolex watches and the world’s largest black diamond. 

The SEC throws the book at Heart, doesn’t quite reach him

The SEC suspected Heart of raising over $1 billion with his three tokens. According to Dexscreener.com, PLSX has gained 70.60% in value in the last 24 hours at the time of writing to reach $0.00004790 and had a market cap of $6.59 billion. HEX rose by 65.67% to $0.01619 with a $6.59 billion market cap. Both tokens saw large jumps in trading volume.

“The alleged misappropriation occurred through digital wallets and crypto asset platforms, none of which were alleged to have any connection with the United States,” Amon found.

The SEC was unsuccessful in having papers served to Heart in Finland in November 2023. In December 2024, lawyers for Heart were unsuccessful in getting the SEC’s case thrown out.

Heart has legal troubles in Finland too

Heart is an American citizen but has lived in Finland for a number of years. In Finland, he was charged with income tax evasion to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars between June 2020 and April 2024 and assault in September. Local press reported that the tax charges were related to the launch of the tokens. The assault charge comes from an incident in February 2021 and involves a minor. 

The Finnish police believe that he has left Finland. An Interpol red notice was issued for Heart in December. In January, Finnish authorities seized 20 luxury watches from an uninvolved third party that purportedly belonged to Heart. 

All the while the law enforcement has searched for him, Heart has maintained a presence on social media. “If the haters really wanted to get me down they could raise more than the $27M I did for medical research. Write free self help books better than my sciVive and Fix The World. Work in the courts for legal precedent for P2P publishing software. Found things that work flawlessly and become valuable,” he wrote on X in December.

“Case dismissed. Thank you Judge Amon,” he posted on  Feb. 28.

Heart has posted close to 500 videos on his YouTube channel Heart Pulse Radio, starting in January 2022,  but the channel has been inactive for the last two months. Heart’s personal website was not accessible at the time of writing. 

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