The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced a lawsuit against Richard Heart, a cryptocurrency industry influencer, for securities fraud. The lawsuit filed in federal court in New York accuses Heart of using millions of dollars of investor funds to enrich himself and spend it on the purchase of luxury products such as watches, sports cars and nothing less than the world’s largest black diamond, a 555 carat stone called ‘The Enigma’.
Heart may have raised over $1 billion in unregistered crypto securities through his companies Hex, PulseChain, and PulseX. Thanks to these companies, he was able to make use of at least twelve million dollars in personal expenses, including at least one Rolex watch valued at more than two million.
Eric Werner, director of the SEC’s Fort Worth Texas regional office, has written a statement stating: “Heart asked investors to buy crypto asset securities in deals it was unable to register. He then ripped off those investors by spending some of their crypto assets on exorbitant luxury goods.”
In addition to the lawsuit filed, the SEC also accuses Heart of publicly reporting the sale of Hex tokens in 2019 in exchange for 2.3 million ‘Ethereum’ (about $678 million), when this investment was actually made by the SEC. carried out himself with the help of other investors in the company. Thanks to this trick, the influencer controlled the currency while creating the false impression of significant trade volume and organic demand.
The crypto-influencer alluded to his luxuries on social networks. In 2022, she tweeted a photo of him posing with “a million dollars of
In recent months, the SEC has pursued a series of lawsuits. In addition to the Heart lawsuit, the watchdog has indicted Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao, and is taking action against Coinbase and Tron founder Justin Sun.
