Turkey detains Hex founder Richard Heart, seizes $7.15 million

Turkish police detained Hex founder Richard Heart in Istanbul on October 14 and seized $7.15 million in cash, six crypto cold wallets and seven firearms, the country's justice minister said. Heart has been wanted on an Interpol notice since 2024.

Justice Minister Akin Gurlek confirmed the operation on Saturday, October 17, in a post on X. Gurlek said Istanbul's chief prosecutor ran the raids, with help from the city police and Turkey's intelligence agency. Officers searched 15 addresses in the Besiktas, Uskudar and Sariyer districts. Heart's wife was detained with him. Police later held three men they said worked as his bodyguards. Five people in all.

What Turkish police say they found

Gurlek's list ran long. It included $7.15 million in cash, 160,000 Turkish lira, six cold wallets, seven firearms and 1,400 rounds of ammunition. Police also logged 28 watches, 97 pieces of jewelry, 300 bags and 19 graphics cards. The electronics pile was large too: 29 phones, 12 laptops and 46 USB drives, by the ministry's count. Anadolu, the state news agency, reported that officers impounded nine vehicles registered to Heart's wife.

Six cold wallets. Contents unknown. Gurlek did not say what the wallets held, or what they might be worth, so the crypto at the center of the case is still a blank. Early figures also shifted. Turkish media on Wednesday put the cash near $4 million. The Saturday statement raised it to $7.15 million. Neither total has been independently confirmed.

Why Finland wants him

Heart's legal name is Richard James Schueler. He is a United States citizen who has spent years in Finland. Interpol issued a Red Notice for him in December 2024 at Finland's request, Gurlek said. Finnish investigators are looking into alleged aggravated tax fraud worth hundreds of millions of euros. They have also cited a separate alleged assault.

A Red Notice is not an arrest warrant. It is a request to find and hold someone while an extradition is worked out. It carries no finding of guilt. Gurlek went further, tying the case to allegations of a $1 billion crypto fraud across the United States and Finland. Those are allegations. Heart has not been convicted of anything. Governments have grown bolder about chasing crypto held abroad, and US officials recently moved to seize $1 billion in Iran-linked crypto.

An earlier US case was thrown out

This is not Heart's first brush with regulators. The US Securities and Exchange Commission sued him in 2023, along with Hex, PulseChain and PulseX. It alleged he ran unregistered securities offerings that raised more than $1 billion, and that he took at least $12 million of investor money for luxury goods. Those included sports cars, watches and a 555-carat black diamond called The Enigma. Heart had built a wide online following promoting Hex, which he launched in 2019 and pitched as a kind of blockchain certificate of deposit.

That case fell apart. In February 2025, Judge Carol Bagley Amon of the Eastern District of New York dismissed it for lack of jurisdiction. She found the SEC had not shown Heart's projects were aimed at US investors. Her ruling did not decide whether the tokens were securities. The SEC let its April 2025 deadline to refile pass. Heart's lawyer called the result "a complete victory." In a separate matter, a US judge this month refused to undo Gemini's CFTC settlement, a reminder that crypto cases cut both ways.

The contrast matters. The SEC's case was civil, and it died on a technical point about where Heart did business, not on whether he had done wrong. The Turkish and Finnish actions are criminal, and they turn on physical custody and seized assets rather than US market reach. That is a different kind of pressure. It does not depend on proving the tokens were securities.

What to watch

Turkey has not said whether Finland has filed for extradition. Gurlek said judicial proceedings and the review of the seized materials are ongoing. For crypto watchers, the open question is simple: what is in those six wallets.

Markets moved fast. Hex, Heart's flagship token, fell about 14% in the 24 hours after the news broke, according to CoinGecko. The related PulseChain and PulseX tokens dropped further, several outlets reported. The next signals are a formal extradition request, and whether Turkish prosecutors file charges or release the five detainees.