Turkish authorities reportedly detained HEX founder Richard Heart in an early-morning raid in Istanbul on Wednesday.
The authorities seized dozens of luxury watches, firearms, and a large cash haul from the 47-year-old, who has been designated as wanted on an Interpol Red Notice since December 2024.
Has the HEX founder been arrested?
Richard Heart, whose legal name is Richard James Schueler, founded the HEX (HEX) token along with the PulseChain and PulseX projects. Turkish reports said he was taken into custody following an early morning raid today carried out under the coordination of the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Alongside Schueler, a woman described as his wife, identified only as A.K was also detained.
Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) located Schueler at an address in the upscale Beşiktaş district after doing some surveillance work. The Istanbul police, financial-crimes investigators, Interpol personnel, and special operations officers are said to have taken part in the raid.
Turkish prosecutors allege Schueler, known in Turkey by the nickname “Balina James,” or Whale James, built an Istanbul-based fraud network that operated through shell companies in the United States, Finland and Spain.
Roughly $4 million in cash and 64 luxury watches (53 Rolexes and 11 Patek Philippe pieces), plus jewelry, firearms and electronics were seized by authorities. Some reports say the $4 million was found vacuum-sealed, alongside unlicensed firearms and ammunition.
Some outlets report a lower figure of $600,000, 2,600 euros and 50,000 Turkish lira. The seized items are also reported to be 24 wristwatches, 20 gold bracelets, three pistols, four rifles, seven magazines, 1,360 rounds of ammunition, two drones and a trove of computing gear, including eight desktop cases, six laptops, 20 graphics cards and cold wallets used to store crypto offline.
Why was Richard Heart placed on the Red Notice?
Finland asked Interpol to issue a Red Notice for Schueler due to allegations of serious tax evasion and assault, and Interpol did so in December 2024. Before that, a Finnish court had ordered Schueler held in custody in his absence, and Finnish police had put him on Europol’s most-wanted list.
Finnish authorities accuse him of dodging taxes tied to crypto income running into hundreds of millions of euros. The assault allegation is reportedly due to a 2021 assault on a 16-year-old. In early 2025, Finnish police seized about 20 luxury watches, mostly Rolexes, valued at roughly $2.6 million from a residence in Espoo.
After the red notice went out in late 2024, Schueler posted on X that it “feels great to be wanted,” and continued promoting HEX on social media.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Schueler in July 2023, saying that he and the entities he controls ran unregistered crypto asset securities offerings that pulled in more than $1 billion from investors, and at least $12 million of that was spent on luxury goods, including sports cars, watches, and a 555-carat black diamond called “The Enigma.”
That civil case was dismissed in 2025 over insufficient jurisdictional links to the United States. Despite the dismissal, some Turkish outlets have described the SEC matter as a $1.5 billion fraud, a figure higher than the SEC’s own stated amount.
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