Influencer Richard Schueler, known online as Richard Heart, is facing a lawsuit from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for marketing unregistered securities, including the Hex token, with which he promised to outperform bitcoin (BTC) and ether (the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network).
In addition to Hex, since 2019 Heart has launched two other cryptocurrency projects: PulseChain and PulseX, through which, by leveraging Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), he raised millions of dollars from investors. This is according to the regulator in a press release issued today.
Heart and his PulseChain project were also accused of fraud “for misappropriating at least 12 million dollars of the offering proceeds to purchase luxury goods, including sports cars, watches, and a 555-carat black diamond known as ‘The Enigma,’ allegedly the largest in the world,” the government agency detailed.
According to the SEC, from December 2019 to November 2020, Heart, through his Hex project, offered and sold tokens in an unregistered securities offering. In doing so, the agency estimates that the primary promoter generated more than 2.3 million ether.
The project founder promoted HEX tokens as an investment designed to make people ‘rich,’ the SEC details, although the method used for its promotion can also be seen on his YouTube channel.
In its lawsuit, the SEC also alleges that, at least between July 2021 and March 2022, Heart orchestrated two unregistered ICOs that raised hundreds of millions of dollars more in crypto assets.
Is this good or bad?
For those who continue to be victims of these scams, it would be relatively “good,” but we don’t need the SEC to regulate anything; rather, we need to educate ourselves as a community and learn to value true decentralization, founded on our privacy and freedom.
This precedent enables the regulatory body to go after individuals and censor or prohibit voices that do not align with the “official” narrative (Bitcoin on the second layer).