Turkish authorities have reportedly detained Richard Heart, the founder of the HEX (HEX) cryptocurrency, in an early-morning raid in Istanbul on Wednesday. Officers seized dozens of luxury watches, firearms, and a large haul of cash from the 47-year-old, who has been wanted under an Interpol Red Notice since December 2024.

Detention in the Beşiktaş district

Richard Heart, whose legal name is Richard James Schueler, created the HEX token, which launched in 2019, along with the PulseChain and PulseX projects. According to Turkish media reports (Sozcu, Karar), he was taken into custody in an early-morning operation carried out under the coordination of the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office. A woman described as his wife, identified only as A.K., was detained alongside him.

Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MİT) located Schueler at an address in the upscale Beşiktaş district after carrying out surveillance work. Istanbul police, financial-crimes investigators, Interpol personnel, and special operations officers are said to have taken part in the raid.

Turkish prosecutors allege that Schueler, known in Turkey by the nickname “Balina James” — Whale James — built an Istanbul-based fraud network that operated through shell companies in the United States, Finland, and Spain. The Turkish allegations add a third jurisdiction to a file that already includes Finland's criminal claims and a dismissed U.S. civil case.

Watches, cash, and firearms seized

Authorities seized roughly $4 million in cash and 64 luxury watches — 53 Rolexes and 11 Patek Philippe pieces — along with jewelry, firearms, and electronics. Some reports say the $4 million was found vacuum-sealed, together with unlicensed firearms and ammunition.

Other outlets reported a lower cash figure of $600,000, 2,600 euros, and 50,000 Turkish lira. The seized items were also described as 24 wristwatches, 20 gold bracelets, three pistols, four rifles, seven magazines, 1,360 rounds of ammunition, two drones, and a trove of computing equipment, including eight desktop cases, six laptops, 20 graphics cards, and cold wallets used to store cryptocurrency offline.

Why Schueler was placed on the Red Notice

Interpol describes a Red Notice not as an arrest warrant but as a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action. Finland asked Interpol to issue a Red Notice for Schueler over allegations of serious tax evasion and assault, and the notice was issued in December 2024. Before that, a Finnish court had ordered him held in custody in his absence, and Finnish police had placed him on Europol's most-wanted list.

Finnish authorities accuse him of evading taxes tied to crypto income running into hundreds of millions of euros. The assault allegation reportedly stems from 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. Because the notice rests on Finland's request, any handover to Finnish custody would go through Turkey's extradition procedures.

Earlier SEC case

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Schueler in July 2023, alleging that he and the entities he controlled ran unregistered crypto asset securities offerings that raised more than $1 billion from investors. 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 — an outcome that did not address the separate criminal allegations pending in Finland. 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.