SEC Walks Away From Case Against HEX Founder Richard Heart, Attorney Says

Attorney says dismissal marks lone crypto lawsuit tossed successful afloat by a national judge.

Apr 23, 2025, 7:16 a.m.

In a uncommon ineligible decision for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the bureau has formally dropped its fraud lawsuit against Richard Schueler, amended known arsenic Richard Heart, laminitis of the crypto projects HEX, PulseChain, and PulseX.

On April 21, the SEC informed the Eastern District Court of New York it would not amend its complaint, efficaciously bringing the lawsuit to a close.

(SEC missive to the court)

“That brings the lawsuit to an extremity with a implicit triumph for Mr. Heart,” said David Kirk, spouse astatine Kirk & Ingram LLP, who represented the HEX laminitis successful an email to CoinDesk. “To my knowledge, this is the lone SEC enforcement enactment against a subordinate successful the cryptocurrency manufacture that was dismissed successful its entirety by a national judge.”

The tribunal had antecedently dismissed the SEC’s archetypal ailment successful February, citing a deficiency of jurisdiction.

Judge Carol Bagley Amon noted that Heart’s activities were not intelligibly targeted astatine U.S. investors, CoinDesk antecedently reported, undermining the SEC’s case.

"This is simply a triumph for open-source software, cryptocurrency, and escaped speech. The SEC really sued bundle codification itself successful this case, claiming it could beryllium an change ego of a person," Heart posted connected X. "This would person acceptable a unspeakable precedent and caused possibly aggregate billions of dollars of harm to the captious unfastened root and escaped bundle manufacture that powers astir of the Internet and your code connected it."

Though the regulator was granted an accidental to amend the complaint, it declined to bash truthful by the extended April 21 deadline.

The SEC had primitively filed suit successful July 2023, accusing Heart of raising implicit $1 cardinal done unregistered securities offerings.

Sam Reynolds