Why it matters

Richard Heart, the founder behind HEX, PulseChain and PulseX, was detained in Istanbul on Oct. 14, pulling the person who controls those projects’ development and treasury-linked decisions into a criminal matter that sits entirely outside the civil securities case U.S. regulators already dropped. For anyone holding exposure to tokens built around Heart’s name, the question now is not whether he beat the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), he did, but whether a separate, unresolved Finnish case can reach him regardless.

Turkish police detained Heart, whose legal name is Richard James Schueler, along with his wife, identified by the initials A.K., at an address in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş district on Wednesday morning, according to İhlas News Agency (IHA) as carried by Daily Sabah and reported further by Decrypt, Türkiye Today and Hürriyet. The operation followed an Interpol Red Notice that Finland requested in 2024.

Key Takeaways

  • Richard Heart, founder of HEX, PulseChain and PulseX, was detained with his wife in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş district on Oct. 14 under an Interpol Red Notice requested by Finland.
  • Police seized roughly $600,000, €2,600 and ₺50,000 in cash, dozens of watches and gold items, firearms, drones and more than a dozen phones, laptops and storage devices, per Türkiye Today.
  • The Red Notice is tied to an aggravated tax fraud charge, with Finnish authorities also pursuing him over alleged assault, Yle reported; Hürriyet separately described an alleged cryptocurrency fraud network spanning the U.S., Finland and Spain.
  • A U.S. judge dismissed the SEC’s unrelated civil case against Heart and his projects in February 2025 over jurisdiction; that outcome does not touch the Finnish allegations.
  • It remains unclear whether Finland has formally requested Heart’s extradition from Turkey, according to Decrypt.

What the operation uncovered

Istanbul’s Intelligence Branch and Financial Crimes Investigation Branch ran the operation with support from Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT), surveilling the Beşiktaş address before moving in, IHA reported. Türkiye Today’s breakdown of the search put the cash haul at $600,000, €2,600 and ₺50,000, alongside 24 wristwatches, 20 gold bracelets and seven gold chain necklaces.

Officers also recovered three pistols, four long-barreled rifles, seven magazines, 1,360 bullets and a dagger-type knife, plus two drones, 12 mobile phones, eight computer cases, six laptop computers, 20 graphics cards, 14 SSDs, seven flash drives and three memory cards, per Türkiye Today’s account. Hürriyet’s Turkish-language report numbered the watches differently, at 64, while largely matching the cash and jewelry figures, and added that Schueler, referred to by the nickname “Balina” (Whale), was accused of building an international cryptocurrency fraud network with linked offices in the United States, Finland and Spain. Heart and his wife were taken to police headquarters for questioning, and Türkiye Today said the investigation is continuing on multiple fronts.

A Red Notice, not a verdict

The Interpol mechanism behind the detention carries real limits on what it proves. A Red Notice asks law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, but it is not an international arrest warrant, and each country still applies its own laws in deciding how to act, Decrypt noted. Finland sought the notice in 2024 on a charge of aggravated tax fraud; Yle had previously reported that Finnish police also suspected Schueler of gross tax evasion and assault, and that he was remanded in custody in absentia on Sept. 13, 2024, a decision made without him present rather than following an arrest on Finnish soil.

Outlets diverge on how to characterize the underlying allegation. Daily Sabah’s account, per Decrypt, described the notice as relating to high-value cryptocurrency fraud, while Hürriyet framed it around an alleged multi-country fraud network. Decrypt’s own reporting said it was not immediately clear whether Finland has formally requested Heart’s extradition from Turkey, leaving the next legal step an open question.

Why the SEC case doesn’t settle this

Heart’s projects already survived one major U.S. legal threat, and that history matters for separating what’s resolved from what isn’t. The SEC’s July 2023 complaint accused Heart, HEX, PulseChain and PulseX of running unregistered crypto offerings that raised more than $1 billion, and alleged Heart diverted at least $12 million of investor funds toward purchases including sports cars, watches and a 555-carat black diamond known as “The Enigma,” according to Decrypt.

Judge Carol Bagley Amon of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York dismissed that case on Feb. 28, 2025, citing deficiencies in personal jurisdiction and the pleaded U.S. conduct, while giving the SEC a chance to amend. The SEC declined to amend by its April deadline, closing the case, which Heart’s lawyer called “a complete victory,” per Decrypt. None of that ruling addressed the Finnish suspicions now at the center of the Istanbul detention.

What to Watch

The immediate question is what Turkish authorities decide once questioning concludes, and whether Finland moves to formalize an extradition request, something Decrypt said was not yet confirmed as of its report. Also unresolved: how Turkish courts classify the allegation underlying the Red Notice, given Daily Sabah’s framing around high-value crypto fraud and Yle’s earlier reporting of a tax evasion and assault investigation in Finland dating to 2024.

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