There were always signs that Richard Heart would become a fugitive

By admin On Jan 29, 2025

Despite Richard Heart’s career arc reaching heights few could have imagined, there were always signs that he would probably end up on the run.

Raised in a poor neighborhood near Pittsburgh, Heart’s — real name Richard Schueler — career peaked with interviewers calling him a billionaire, his own Netflix documentary, and the crypto project he created hitting $85 billion market capitalization.

However, that token, HEX, has fallen 97% as of publication time, and last month, Interpol issued a Red Notice for Heart’s arrest.

Today, he remains on the European Union’s Most Wanted list and is an international fugitive.

HEX, has fallen 97% as of publication time.

Heart got rich the wrong way

Despite bragging about spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a single watch, the source of Heart’s money was never clear.

He claimed to have operated a multi-million dollar business online, prior to entering the crypto industry but, apart from admitting that he used mass emailing techniques for some of his marketing, he never quite explained how he managed to grow it so quickly.

That was until a lawsuit shed some light on questionable dealings during his pre-crypto career.

According to a District Court judge, Heart was illegally spamming people to generate leads and sales. He lost a lawsuit revealing his unsolicited email practices in 2002.

Richard Heart’s missing millions

Once he learned about Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), the scale of Heart’s grift grew. He launched Hex (HEX), a smart contract on Ethereum; Pulse (PLS), a new blockchain; and PulseX (PLSX), an exchange on Pulse.

Not only this, illegal business practices have dogged Heart throughout his career.

Finnish authorities allege his lifetime tax evasion to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has alleged that he sold unregistered securities and misappropriated another $12 million of his investors’ money to buy luxury goods like Rolex watches and the Enigma diamond.

Europe’s Most Wanted notice also notes criminal charges related to an alleged physical attack on a 16-year-old.

A fallen cult of personality

Throughout the rise and fall of Hex, Pulsechain, and PulseX, Heart made no apologies for a big ego and adorning himself with signs of wealth.

He called himself a “leader” and a “hero,” bragging about owning sports cars and expensive watches; he demanded gratitude and worship from his fans on his frequent, multi-hour YouTube livestreams; and he fostered a cult of personality around his supposedly Mensa-level IQ and mastery of blockchain code on Bitcoin and Ethereum.

According to critic Eric Wall, Heart “has literally read books on how to create cults.”

Heart frequently reminded critics of the $27 million that he supposedly raised for medical research and accused critics of finding it “easier to tear down others than to rise up themselves.”

Again, the signs that Heart would become a fugitive were there all along.

A fugitive lurking somewhere abroad

Hex, Pulsechain, and PulseX, according to the SEC and Finnish police, were simply vehicles through which Heart raised investment and misappropriated money via unregistered securities offerings.

His delays, copy-and-pasted portions of code, and catastrophic token emissions were all warning signs for careful observers that Heart wasn’t launching these projects for the right reasons.

For his part, Heart vehemently denies wrongdoing and disagrees with the SEC and Finnish police’s allegations.

Did Richard Heart’s exit plan include becoming an international fugitive? It was always possible, although his ego might have also led him to believe that he could argue his way out of any enforcement action.

Staying in character and on-brand, for example, when the world learned of his European Most Wanted notice, he tweeted defiantly, “It feels great to be wanted.”

It’s an ending to a story that observers had seen coming for years.

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