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SEC Charges Hex Founder Richard Heart with Misappropriating Millions of Dollars

168 points by mfiguiere 3y ago

colesantiago 3y ago
[flagged]
- LexiMax 3y ago
  And of course, Dan Olson's amazing "Line Goes Up." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://eizebasa.baby/line-goes-up https://eizebasa.baby/line-goes-up (Complete script)
  - rqtwteye 3y ago
    Dan Olsen is fantastic. “line goes up” is great. So is Hhis video is about flat earthers.
boeingUH60 3y ago
He raised over $1 billion?!…there was really too much money floating around begging for where to invest circa 2020. The same goes for many questionable startups that raised money. Notice how these schemes have disappeared in tough times.
- delusional 3y ago
  $1 billion in crypto, so not real money. $1 billion on IOU's from some other ponzi scheme. Right after it states that they're also charged "misappropriating at least $12 million of offering proceeds" which seems like a more reasonable figure. They probably stole in the order of $12-20 million.
  - iancarroll 3y ago
    The article mentions at least 2 million Ethereum, which is certainly liquid enough to be a couple orders of magnitude above $10 million.
    - Retric 3y ago
      There’s a fair amount of liquidity, but trying to withdraw 1 billion in Eth is going to impact it’s valuation.
      - latchkey 3y ago
        ETH has a $223b market cap, so 1b is .45%.
        delusional 3y ago
        No? It's not?
        latchkey 3y ago
        https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/
        School-Cotton 3y ago
        Regardless, 1 billion is not 4% of 223 billion. You’re off by a factor of ten.
        latchkey 3y ago
        fixed... =)
        colecut 3y ago
        0.45%
        latchkey 3y ago
        damn maths. thanks!
        arcticbull 3y ago
  - kyleblarson 3y ago
    That's as good as money sir, those are IOU's.
blueyes 3y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/HEXcrypto/comments/zotxtv/father_of_one_of_the_moscow_idaho_murder_victims/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HEXcrypto/comments/zotxtv/father_of... Kind of a shoe-shine boy indicator ... time to get out.
- rideontime 3y ago
  > He wears the same hat in every interview Jesus christ. Guy uses interviews about his murdered daughter to shill his shitcoin? e: Yep, they're proud of this: https://hex.buzz/steve-goncalves-hex/ https://hex.buzz/steve-goncalves-hex/ Scumbags.
Analemma_ 3y ago
Apart from maybe Coinbase, I just take as a given that every single actor in crypto is a criminal, and so far this assumption has been pretty much bang-on accurate.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dcist 3y ago
  And although there hasn't been any evidence of top-level fraud, a Coinbase product manager was sentenced to two years in prison for an insider trading scam: https://fortune.com/crypto/2023/05/09/former-coinbase-employee-sentenced-to-two-years-in-prison-for-first-cryptocurrency-insider-trading-case/ https://fortune.com/crypto/2023/05/09/former-coinbase-employ...
- dpflan 3y ago
  Coinbase is dressed up nicely, but you say basically that all actors and therefore coin creators/owners are criminal, then CB facilitates criminal and is criminal implicitly by turning a blind eye to facilitation at a minimum assumption of involvement. It's been called a casino.
- loeg 3y ago
  Just to expand a bit on the "maybe," it seems pretty clear that the SEC's opinion is that most of Coinbase's business model is being an unregistered securities broker (except for perhaps allowing trading bitcoin and ethereum), which is illegal.
- aionaiodfgnio 3y ago
  Maybe Coinbase won't just waltz off with their depositor's money, but their business model appears to be illegal from top to bottom. The SEC alleges that basically everything they are doing is illegal. Even if the SEC is wrong, Coinbase's practice of operating as broker, exchange, and clearing agent is a massive conflict of interest.
- SamPatt 3y ago
  I co-founded an a16z and USV funded crypto startup in 2015, and I knew lots of people in the industry. There are certainly bad actors, probably more than other industries. But it's absolutely nothing like "every single actor." Many were (and presumably still are) true believers in the technology, and got into it the field with good (though perhaps naive) intentions.
bhouston 3y ago
Thank god, that guy was incredibly obnoxious.
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  You can say that again. A total narcissist scammer of the worst kind. He started with Viagra spam and then found crypto shilling. He liked to hang out on HN to shill his scams and recruit developers, but I may have accidentally made him feel uncomfortable by asking him lots of pointed questions about his past, and he hasn't shown his face in a while. His go-to response is literally "Dodge, dodge!" His real name is actually Richard J Schueler, under which he is famously known as the "Spam King", for being one of the first people in the world to be successfully sued for online spam, specifically the Viagra spam scheme that he ran from Panama (which he lost). Richard Hart (aka "Spam King" Richard J Schueler) wins the "Golden Pump Award" for "Best New Scam" for his POS shitcoin Ponzi scheme "HEX": https://twitter.com/JuanSGalt/status/1233242355995750400 https://twitter.com/JuanSGalt/status/1233242355995750400 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=857&v=tf-lJu5iDh8&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=WorldCryptoNetwork https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=857&v=tf-lJu5iDh... Peacefire.org beats spammers in court. https://www.zdnet.com/article/peacefire-org-beats-spammers-in-court/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/peacefire-org-beats-spammers-i... >Free-speech group Peacefire.org wins a legal round in its fight against unsolicited e-mail, invoking Washington state's anti-spam law. >The King County District Court in Bellevue, Wash., on Monday granted Peacefire $1,000 in damages in each of three complaints filed by Peacefire Webmaster Bennett Haselton. The small-claims suit alleged that Red Moss Media, Paulann Allison and Richard Schueler [who now operates under the pseudonum "Richard Hart"] sent unsolicited commercial messages to Haselton that bore deceptive information such as a forged return e-mail address or misleading subject line. More embarrassing facts and proof he doesn't want you to read here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36944841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36944841
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    Given the difficulties in payments when it comes to gray-market dick pills, I’m surprised he wasn’t an early bitcoin whale and made more than enough from that to just retire.
hobs 3y ago
I almost was very sad because I thought this was referring to hex.tech which I love and is great
confoundcofound 3y ago
The biggest lie in crypto is that tokens are bought for utility and not speculative gains. I don't know if it's delusion or intentional deception. I have friends who are "thought leaders" in the space, who opine on the disruptive potential of crypto yet spend their days tweeting about the latest memecoin that just 100x'd. The entire concept of crypto "value" rests upon the marriage of token utility and economic value. Financial gain is baked into the mechanic. And between the two, people care far more about financial gain. It's a fundamental misalignment of incentives.
- dboreham 3y ago
  To be fair the same thing happens in the regular world. e.g. look at a list of the richest people in the USA and see how they made their money.
  - mikeyouse 3y ago
    Elon, Bezos, Bill Gates, Ellison, Buffet, Paige, Brin, Ballmer, Bloomberg, Walton --- which of those billion/trillion dollar companies do you think in any way compares to the shambolic crypto world?
    - fnimick 3y ago
      I mean, we joke that Oracle is a legal company with an engineering department... but at least they build things.
      - mikeyouse 3y ago
        Right. I don't like most of the people on that list and e.g. Oracle is a mess of a company that is actively hostile to the software world -- but they still sold $42 billion worth of goods/services to willing customers last year. Nothing at all like crypto trading.
  - mgraczyk 3y ago
    The 20 richest people in the USA all make their wealth via profitable companies that have returned value to shareholders.
dotnet00 3y ago
Centralized ~exchanges~ (edit: services) defeat the point of crypto (particularly of a blockchain), so people responsible for said centralization are only in it for the money. Thus, the question with all of these companies is how long before they get outed for scamming their customers.
- kelthuzad 3y ago
  That's a reductionist view, there can be many reasons why somebody would want to temporarily park a portion of their assets on a centralized exchange. It's a a trade off between convenience, security, higher liquidity, trading opportunities et cetera, these are just some that come to mind. One can do all of that and still have the majority of their assets in cold storage. The world is not white and black.
  - bennyschmidt 3y ago
    From the Bitcoin whitepaper: "A common solution is to introduce a trusted central authority ... The problem with this solution is that the fate of the entire money system depends on the company" The vision of course did not include centralized authorities, it's counter to the entire purpose. We already have had digital banks, crypto is not about having digital convenience. It's not the "exchange" part that wasn't envisioned, it's the "centralized" part, because that is the same thing as a bank. That's what the SEC (rightly) made their case on with Coinbase and others. Bitconnect, FTX, Coinbase... that kind of thing was not envisioned originally and is counter to the whole concept and purpose of crypto.
    - kelthuzad 3y ago
      "One can do all of that and still have the majority of their assets in cold storage."
      - bennyschmidt 3y ago
        Nice try with the quotes hahah. But no, that is not mentioned in the whitepaper, and you are way off now: Cold storage is a cloud term for long-term storage, it has nothing to do with "cold wallets" - the term centralized exchanges use for "off-chain" assets. Also this (from bitcoin whitepaper): "A block header with no transactions would be about 80 bytes. If we suppose blocks are generated every 10 minutes, 80 bytes * 6 * 24 * 365 = 4.2MB per year. With computer systems typically selling with 2GB of RAM as of 2008, and Moore's Law predicting current growth of 1.2GB per year, storage should not be a problem even if the block headers must be kept in memory." I'm convinced 90% of people talking about crypto don't get it.
bebop404 3y ago
It's a shame it took this long to go after such a blatant Ponzi. There is even an ad for this scheme painted on a wall near my home (in Mexico), so one would hope that the US will not be the only country where he will face charges.
- kelthuzad 3y ago
  It's crazy how many crypto natives were warning "hexicans" about hex and pointing out the most obvious indicator that it's a scam, namely Richard Heart defrauding them, yet most of his fanboys were not even willing to listen or evaluate the evidence with an open mind.
  - HappySweeney 3y ago
    That would have had them admitting to themselves that their money is gone, including the promised gains they likely already spent.
  - DANmode 3y ago
    Came to this thread just to say RIP Hexicans, thanks for providing the space!
- 3LazTjBv-f 3y ago
  I liked local "Italian restaurant ad" Ponzi. I mean it still looked like scam to me, but I can understand why people fell for it. Scheme can only last for few months, a year at most, so the organizer must be ready to GTFO as soon as it reaches the peak. Participants are offered $1k/months for placing the restaurant ad on their car (banner behind rear windshield) but asked for $3k or $4k "security deposit". Of course the "restaurant ad" actually only said "I make $1k/month with this ad, call xxx to learn how".
DonHopkins 3y ago
Richard Hart (aka "Spam King" Richard J Schueler) has an account on Hacker News that he used to shill his scams and attempt to recruit gullible HN developers to debase themselves by working on his shitcoins, just like Rick and Morty's "Glooty" alien who's always asking "Do you want to develop an app?": https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=RichardHeart https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=RichardHeart https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=RichardHeart https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=RichardHeart https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27139757 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27139757 RichardHeart on May 13, 2021 | prev | next [–] Elon is still promoting Dogecoin which is also proof of work. Lots of people will be harmed when it crashes. Nearly all cryptocurrencies crash 85% every once in a while. DonHopkins on May 13, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–] Humor: So I'm sure your explanation of why somebody hasn't already successfully implemented practical proof of stake before is totally credible and unbiased! ;) Not Humor: If somebody will work on it for free, do you promise to pay them in your own cryptocurrency? "Will work for stake!" RichardHeart on May 13, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–] You don't have to destroy the environment to maintain a database. There's other ways to achieve censorship resistance than waste. Blockchains are are all social consensus anyway. DonHopkins on May 13, 2021 | root | parent | next [–] "Do you want to develop my new cryptocurrency?" is the new "Do you want to develop an app?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVy0JWX5XEY&ab_channel=AdultSwim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVy0JWX5XEY&ab_channel=Adult... Edit: [You spoiled the joke by retroactively editing your post and removing your amusing disclaimer that you had a financial stake in shilling POS, and your hilarious call for programmers to help you develop your new cryptocurrency! "Dodge, dodge." That's what makes you so funny! The "Glooty" character parody is spot on.] RichardHeart on May 13, 2021 | root | parent | next [–] I see your joke and raise you one joke https://paywithexposure.com/ https://paywithexposure.com/ Also, you should actually watch the interview on the page you just linked. It's amazing. DonHopkins on May 13, 2021 | root | parent | next [–] Not a joke: Confronting Richard Heart of HEX - SPAM KING and Crypto Scammer https://web.archive.org/web/20201115205631/https://www.cointelligence.com/content/confronting-richard-heart-of-hex-spam-king-and-crypto-scammer/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201115205631/https://www.coint... So will you again confirm what the article claims you already confirmed? >Richard Heart was sued for spamming in 2002 under WA state law. Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/peacefire-org-beats-spammers-in-court/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/peacefire-org-beats-spammers-i... >During the interview at ANON, Richard confirmed that he was one of the first people in the world to be sued for online spam, back in 2002. This shows us Richard has experience abusing unregulated markets, as he is doing with crypto these days. Is this an accurate quote of your own words? >When I pressed the matter and asked for a simple “yes” or “no” as to whether he, as the FOUNDER of HEX, knows who benefits from the funds sent to the “Origin Address” he flat-out said “I’m dodging your question.” Dodging the question! He proceeds to repeat “Dodge, dodge.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367412 DonHopkins on Nov 28, 2021 | parent | context | favorite | on: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consens... Speaking of POS scammers, what ever happened to Richard "Dodge Dodge" Heart, winner of the "Golden Pump Award" for "Best New Scam" for his POS get-rich-quick pyramid scheme called "HEX", who falsely claims that proof of stake is a proven successful replacement for proof of work, and who shills HEX and tries to recruit unsuspecting developers and victims here on HN and many other places, by making illegal false claims of providing CDs (certificates of deposit)? To be fair, I'd love to hear him chime in on this discussion, and tell his side of the story, relate his exploits and prosecution as a viagra spammer, and finally answer all those unanswered questions people have asked him, to which he replied "Dodge Dodge". Not that he's unique or special: POS shills like him are a dime a dozen. But he hangs out here and shills on HN, and has won awards for his deceptive scams (and also lost court cases too), and claims to "help people" on his web site, so I hope to hear from him again. https://richardheart.com/ https://richardheart.com/ His real name is actually Richard J Schueler, under which he is famously known as the "Spam King", for being one of the first people in the world to be successfully sued for online spam, specifically the Viagra spam scheme that he ran from Panama (which he lost). Richard Hart (aka "Spam King" Richard J Schueler) wins the "Golden Pump Award" for "Best New Scam" for his POS shitcoin Ponzi scheme "HEX": https://twitter.com/JuanSGalt/status/1233242355995750400 https://twitter.com/JuanSGalt/status/1233242355995750400 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=857&v=tf-lJu5iDh8&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=WorldCryptoNetwork https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=857&v=tf-lJu5iDh... Peacefire.org beats spammers in court. https://www.zdnet.com/article/peacefire-org-beats-spammers-in-court/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/peacefire-org-beats-spammers-i... >Free-speech group Peacefire.org wins a legal round in its fight against unsolicited e-mail, invoking Washington state's anti-spam law. >The King County District Court in Bellevue, Wash., on Monday granted Peacefire $1,000 in damages in each of three complaints filed by Peacefire Webmaster Bennett Haselton. The small-claims suit alleged that Red Moss Media, Paulann Allison and Richard Schueler [who now operates under the pseudonum "Richard Hart"] sent unsolicited commercial messages to Haselton that bore deceptive information such as a forged return e-mail address or misleading subject line. Confronting Richard Heart of HEX - SPAM KING and Crypto Scammer https://web.archive.org/web/20201115205631/https://www.cointelligence.com/content/confronting-richard-heart-of-hex-spam-king-and-crypto-scammer/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201115205631/https://www.coint... >During ANON Summit 2020, I participated in a “fireside chat” with Richard Heart, founder of HEX. HEX is one of the most sophisticated, if not THE most sophisticated scams I have ever seen. >Why was I so aggressive with Richard? I have a lot of experience fighting with scammers, at events, and in online discussions. I’m familiar with their bullshit techniques. Richard is the sort of “master debater” who will answer a question without actually answering the content of the question. I watched more than 6 hours of his previous talks and learned how to tell when he was trying to avoid a real answer. >If you don't want to sit through hours of interviews yourself, this 4 minute video not only sheds light on Heart's motivation for establishing HEX, but also shows just how abrasive and crude he can be. This video was not created or edited by Cointelligence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MIdlXHedlU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MIdlXHedlU >I want to draw your attention to the quote in the video above: "What am I going to make more money doing? Promoting my token, that I own a whole ton of? Or promoting bitcoin, where I own one-one zillionth of the available supply?" He's clearly in this to make money for himself in any way possible. [...] >When asked why HEX was not categorized as a security, at around the 21 minute mark, Richard offered an explanation that has no legal grounding. On the website, HEX claims that it is "The first high interest blockchain certificate of deposit." However, HEX has no legal authority to issue CDs. Richard is illegally claiming to provide CDs when in fact the instruments are nothing but glorified savings accounts. More quotes: "What's up now, fggot? What are you going to do now, you little btch? Get the fuck out of here! That's the dumbest piece of shit I've ever seen in my fucking life. [...] Let me give you some more bullshit, ok?" -Richard Heart aka Richard J Schueler Richard Heart - Spam, ICOs, and Death Threats https://imnotdead.co.uk/blog/richard-heart https://imnotdead.co.uk/blog/richard-heart Richard James Schueler - Friggin Spam King https://web.archive.org/web/20190416235350/http://www.panama-guide.com/article.php/20070926122502156 https://web.archive.org/web/20190416235350/http://www.panama... Why HEX is a Ponzi and not a solid investment (Part 2): Richard Heart https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/kwhjxa/why_hex_is_a_ponzi_and_not_a_solid_investment/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/kwhjxa/why_... >During the interview at ANON, Richard confirmed that he was one of the first people in the world to be sued for online spam, back in 2002. This shows us Richard has experience abusing unregulated markets, as he is doing with crypto these days. Richard: this an accurate quote of your own words? >When I pressed the matter and asked for a simple “yes” or “no” as to whether he, as the FOUNDER of HEX, knows who benefits from the funds sent to the “Origin Address” he flat-out said “I’m dodging your question.” Dodging the question! He proceeds to repeat “Dodge, dodge.” Richard, your tag-line "Do you want to develop my new cryptocurrency?" is the new "Do you want to develop an app?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVy0JWX5XEY&ab_channel=AdultSwim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVy0JWX5XEY&ab_channel=Adult... "Dodge, dodge." -Richard Heart aka Richard J Schueler
paulpauper 3y ago
meh civil suit. these people are used to being sued or threated lawsuits .
sdfghswe 3y ago
[flagged]
houseatrielah 3y ago
I had some interest in HEX after I saw an airplane with a "BUY HEX" banner fly over my house. The major trick is the decimal point. Launch a crypto worth 0.000000001 USD per unit, then when it goes to 0.0000001 USD per unit because of low supply, scream into YouTube: "I GAVE YOU 100X PEOPLE, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?"
- DANmode 3y ago
  > I had some interest in HEX after I saw an airplane with a "BUY HEX" banner fly over my house. These sorts of advertisements have been an anti-signal for some time...
davidgerard 3y ago
fun fact, Richard used to sell email spam software. Is shitcoin pumping a step up or a step down? Richard is a very charming fellow, very likable, but in a way that cautions you not to let any of your money within a mile of him.
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  Charming??! I've known enough of his kind that his "charm" immediately sets off all of my Malignant Narcissist Klaxons. He's charming in the same sense that the creepy guy driving the windowless "FREE CANDY" van is generous. And you only mentioned the tip of the Spamberg -- it goes MUCH deeper: His real name is actually Richard J Schueler, under which he is famously known as the "Spam King", for being one of the first people in the world to be successfully sued for online spam, specifically the Viagra spam scheme that he ran from Panama (which he lost). Richard Heart - Spam, ICOs, and Death Threats: https://imnotdead.co.uk/blog/richard-heart https://imnotdead.co.uk/blog/richard-heart PSA: Crypto HEX Founder is Actually Notorious Criminal ‘Spam King’: https://blockcast.cc/news/psa-crypto-hex-founder-is-actually-notorious-criminal-spam-king/ https://blockcast.cc/news/psa-crypto-hex-founder-is-actually... Richard James Schueler - Friggin Spam King: https://web.archive.org/web/20190416235350/http://www.panama-guide.com/article.php/20070926122502156 https://web.archive.org/web/20190416235350/http://www.panama... HEX Founder found to be Notorious Criminal: https://cryptotraderspro.com/hex-founder-outed-spam-king/ https://cryptotraderspro.com/hex-founder-outed-spam-king/ Why HEX is a Ponzi and not a solid investment (Part 2): Richard Heart: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/kwhjxa/why_hex_is_a_ponzi_and_not_a_solid_investment/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/kwhjxa/why_... >During the interview at ANON, Richard confirmed that he was one of the first people in the world to be sued for online spam, back in 2002. This shows us Richard has experience abusing unregulated markets, as he is doing with crypto these days. Hasn't the last eight or so years of Trump trained people to instantly see through that kind of bullshit, and easily recognize a malignant narcissist for what they are, or does he specialize in fooling the same kind of people Trump still fools? What kind of person actually makes videos and web pages about themself with titles like: RICHARD HEART IS THE BEST PERSON EVER! I OWN THE WORLD'S LARGEST DIAMOND. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TQGzltcKNk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TQGzltcKNk Richard Heart is a force for good: https://richardheart.com/ https://richardheart.com/
sergiotapia 3y ago
[flagged]
- bhouston 3y ago
  That didn't seem to help SBF though - he is still arrested and bring prosecuted for his financial crimes. Also SBF contributed to both D and R equally apparently - but he did his R contributions dark to avoid scrutiny, but is that claim of his true? I don't know: Although federal election receipts show that Bankman-Fried donated almost exclusively to Democrats, he claimed on a November phone call with YouTuber Tiffany Fong that he donated an equal amount to Republicans and Democrats. “All my Republican donations were dark,” he said, referring to political donations that are not publicly disclosed in FEC filings. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the f—k out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.” Given that he donated nearly $40 million to Democrats in the 2022 election cycle—and he admitted to giving an equal amount to Republicans—his total political contributions may have actually been around $80 million. https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donations/# https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donatio...
  - sergiotapia 3y ago
    Please ;) "Federal prosecutors are dropping campaign finance violation charges" "Bankman-Fried — who is accused of stealing from customers of his now-defunct FTX cryptocurrency exchange — still faces 12 other charges in the case, though five more of the counts are still in question" https://nypost.com/2023/07/27/feds-drop-one-charge-against-sam-bankman-fried/ https://nypost.com/2023/07/27/feds-drop-one-charge-against-s...
    - bhouston 3y ago
      The reason is because the extradition agreement didn't mention those charges, which is a technicality unfortunately. He is still be prosecuted for his financial crimes.
jgalt212 3y ago
Richard Heart is a force for good. https://richardheart.com/ https://richardheart.com/
wonderwonder 3y ago
The craziest part to me is that he was so incredibly open about it and people just kept giving him $. He just made video after video showing himself wearing outfits worth tens of thousands of dollars. Not a video about something else where he happened to be dressed up, but the video was literally about how much the items he was wearing cost. On top of that he looked absolutely ridiculous. I have never seen such a real life example of money not being able to buy class.
- ChainOfFools 3y ago
  I had the strange luck to have known Richard Hart before he became a crypto huckster. In the year or so leading up to his transition from random spammer nobody to wealthy scamming random nobody, he was pretty aggressively critical and cynical about all things cryptocurrency, especially about the abject gullibility and willful ignorance of the people who sign on to all of the ideological nonsense about the blockchain and decentralization, and people who take all of the obviously manipulated metrics about market cap, volume and activity at face value. He could have been your very standard hn cryptocritic, going by his stated positions. I'm not sure exactly what happened to him in the year or so between when I last encountered him in certain telegram channels, but I get the sense that his reaction to the shit show of cryptocurrency was rather than settling for being another Cassandra with a lot to say and no money to say it about the dangers of the crypto Ponzi scene, he went full Mirror Universe and decided to simply take advantage of the people who he had contempt for, as openly and boldly and shamelessly and transparently as he possibly could. This way he wouldn't have to feel as guilty about fooling them. Like a Stephen Colbert or Sacha Baron Cohen but with more meanness and less talent, and without any remorse for bilking the naive minnows snagged in the bycatch of his cryptobro trawling net.
  - wonderwonder 3y ago
    He very much took advantage of the adage, "a fool and his money are soon parted". On some level I can't even blame him. People are literally sending hundreds/ thousands of dollars in eth to people that just list an address and give vague mention of getting something valuable back. He probably figured, why not me? He could have just moved to Russia and have been fine. SEC frowns upon blatant scams though.
thesausageking 3y ago
The SEC is just the wrong organization to be enforcing laws in crypto. This was a scam that was done out in the open and launched 4 years ago. People conned into buying this have already lost their money and they're not getting it back. The founder will use some of the $1B+ he's made of it to defend himself in a long, drawn out court case that the SEC will eventually settle. The SEC's purpose is supposed to be to protect investors and no one is being protected by this.
- paulpauper 3y ago
  the sec also does not bring criminal investigation, only refer. it's not even that effective as a deterrent. only jail stops criminals, not lawsuits.
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  If not the SEC then who? It took decades before Bernie Madoff's crimes came to light under SEC investigation (and then eventual criminal prosecution). Most of his victims had already lost their money and were never getting it back, even with the criminal suits they eventually joined that was mostly to show justice to Madoff not to recover lost funds. From that perspective, 4 years is possibly a record in speediness for scams of this scale. (Cryptocurrencies sure have sped up the scams, but also seem to have greatly sped up the investigations into the spams, perhaps in a way that some will find ironic.) The SEC can't protect all investors a priori (ahead of time). There's always going to be a long tail of investigations into past misdeeds and airing the dirty laundry. In theory the more dirty laundry the SEC can air from previous misdeeds the more it educates the public on things to look for and the more it assures would-be scammers that eventually they will be caught and will have to face the American justice system. (Whether or not you think the American justice system capable of doling out enough criminal charges that stick to these sorts of injustices, it is always still worth trying.)
  - x-complexity 3y ago
    > If not the SEC then who? For US entities other than the SEC in particular, the CFTC that can also handle this problem if the token's not a security. However, I'm extremely weary of this immediate ceding of control, as it gives back power to the State. The ideal would be that such products would be marked as high-risk by default, and that it should be made explicitly clear that there's a high chance (> 90%) of failure in such a product's early stages, with ample warnings, cautions, & checks detailing so. Past a certain point, it should be acknowledged that the individual made the decision to invest in such a product. The aforementioned warnings & checks on all new products & services by default will make that boundary clear, with the lack of said checks making it visible . > It took decades before Bernie Madoff's crimes came to light under SEC investigation (and then eventual criminal prosecution). Most of his victims had already lost their money and were never getting it back, even with the criminal suits they eventually joined that was mostly to show justice to Madoff not to recover lost funds. Bernie Madoff's scheme was prolonged due to the reputation of the man himself, and from A trusting that B said that he was trustworthy, based on C's vouch of his trustworthiness, based on D's vouch, ad infinitum. After establishing the minimal amount of people to vouch for him, the effects from said connected network compounded as more people trusted him based on that network. Again, this circles back to the main issue regarding trust. It's way too easy to earn trust just because you look/act some way, were a part of something, and/or made connections to the right people. Trust should be isolated to a particular venture/effort & no further, and if someone wanted to try something else that was at least 2 steps removed from their previous ventures, that trust should be rebuilt from scratch & not based on existing efforts made.
kane231 3y ago
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mancerayder 3y ago
Is this the same guy that made millions as a spam king decades ago, lives or lived in Panama and made the news due to a neighbor murder, and appeared until recently on podcasts /YouTube crypto discussions and interviews dressed as a velvet king? Surely not that guy. Who would have thought he could be blowing smoke somehow.
Elizabethruth55 3y ago
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MarBohm 3y ago
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JuanaHer000 3y ago
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168 points by mfiguiere 3y ago

colesantiago 3y ago

[flagged]

LexiMax 3y ago
And of course, Dan Olson's amazing "Line Goes Up." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://eizebasa.baby/line-goes-up https://eizebasa.baby/line-goes-up (Complete script)
- rqtwteye 3y ago
  Dan Olsen is fantastic. “line goes up” is great. So is Hhis video is about flat earthers.

boeingUH60 3y ago

He raised over $1 billion?!…there was really too much money floating around begging for where to invest circa 2020. The same goes for many questionable startups that raised money. Notice how these schemes have disappeared in tough times.

delusional 3y ago
$1 billion in crypto, so not real money. $1 billion on IOU's from some other ponzi scheme. Right after it states that they're also charged "misappropriating at least $12 million of offering proceeds" which seems like a more reasonable figure. They probably stole in the order of $12-20 million.
- iancarroll 3y ago
  The article mentions at least 2 million Ethereum, which is certainly liquid enough to be a couple orders of magnitude above $10 million.
  - Retric 3y ago
    There’s a fair amount of liquidity, but trying to withdraw 1 billion in Eth is going to impact it’s valuation.
    - latchkey 3y ago
      ETH has a $223b market cap, so 1b is .45%.
      - delusional 3y ago
        No? It's not?
        latchkey 3y ago
        https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/
        School-Cotton 3y ago
        Regardless, 1 billion is not 4% of 223 billion. You’re off by a factor of ten.
        latchkey 3y ago
        fixed... =)
      - colecut 3y ago
        0.45%
        latchkey 3y ago
        damn maths. thanks!
      - arcticbull 3y ago
- kyleblarson 3y ago
  That's as good as money sir, those are IOU's.

blueyes 3y ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/HEXcrypto/comments/zotxtv/father_of_one_of_the_moscow_idaho_murder_victims/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HEXcrypto/comments/zotxtv/father_of... Kind of a shoe-shine boy indicator ... time to get out.

rideontime 3y ago
> He wears the same hat in every interview Jesus christ. Guy uses interviews about his murdered daughter to shill his shitcoin? e: Yep, they're proud of this: https://hex.buzz/steve-goncalves-hex/ https://hex.buzz/steve-goncalves-hex/ Scumbags.

Analemma_ 3y ago

Apart from maybe Coinbase, I just take as a given that every single actor in crypto is a criminal, and so far this assumption has been pretty much bang-on accurate.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dcist 3y ago
And although there hasn't been any evidence of top-level fraud, a Coinbase product manager was sentenced to two years in prison for an insider trading scam: https://fortune.com/crypto/2023/05/09/former-coinbase-employee-sentenced-to-two-years-in-prison-for-first-cryptocurrency-insider-trading-case/ https://fortune.com/crypto/2023/05/09/former-coinbase-employ...
dpflan 3y ago
Coinbase is dressed up nicely, but you say basically that all actors and therefore coin creators/owners are criminal, then CB facilitates criminal and is criminal implicitly by turning a blind eye to facilitation at a minimum assumption of involvement. It's been called a casino.
loeg 3y ago
Just to expand a bit on the "maybe," it seems pretty clear that the SEC's opinion is that most of Coinbase's business model is being an unregistered securities broker (except for perhaps allowing trading bitcoin and ethereum), which is illegal.
aionaiodfgnio 3y ago
Maybe Coinbase won't just waltz off with their depositor's money, but their business model appears to be illegal from top to bottom. The SEC alleges that basically everything they are doing is illegal. Even if the SEC is wrong, Coinbase's practice of operating as broker, exchange, and clearing agent is a massive conflict of interest.
SamPatt 3y ago
I co-founded an a16z and USV funded crypto startup in 2015, and I knew lots of people in the industry. There are certainly bad actors, probably more than other industries. But it's absolutely nothing like "every single actor." Many were (and presumably still are) true believers in the technology, and got into it the field with good (though perhaps naive) intentions.

bhouston 3y ago

Thank god, that guy was incredibly obnoxious.

DonHopkins 3y ago
You can say that again. A total narcissist scammer of the worst kind. He started with Viagra spam and then found crypto shilling. He liked to hang out on HN to shill his scams and recruit developers, but I may have accidentally made him feel uncomfortable by asking him lots of pointed questions about his past, and he hasn't shown his face in a while. His go-to response is literally "Dodge, dodge!" His real name is actually Richard J Schueler, under which he is famously known as the "Spam King", for being one of the first people in the world to be successfully sued for online spam, specifically the Viagra spam scheme that he ran from Panama (which he lost). Richard Hart (aka "Spam King" Richard J Schueler) wins the "Golden Pump Award" for "Best New Scam" for his POS shitcoin Ponzi scheme "HEX": https://twitter.com/JuanSGalt/status/1233242355995750400 https://twitter.com/JuanSGalt/status/1233242355995750400 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=857&v=tf-lJu5iDh8&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=WorldCryptoNetwork https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=857&v=tf-lJu5iDh... Peacefire.org beats spammers in court. https://www.zdnet.com/article/peacefire-org-beats-spammers-in-court/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/peacefire-org-beats-spammers-i... >Free-speech group Peacefire.org wins a legal round in its fight against unsolicited e-mail, invoking Washington state's anti-spam law. >The King County District Court in Bellevue, Wash., on Monday granted Peacefire $1,000 in damages in each of three complaints filed by Peacefire Webmaster Bennett Haselton. The small-claims suit alleged that Red Moss Media, Paulann Allison and Richard Schueler [who now operates under the pseudonum "Richard Hart"] sent unsolicited commercial messages to Haselton that bore deceptive information such as a forged return e-mail address or misleading subject line. More embarrassing facts and proof he doesn't want you to read here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36944841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36944841
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  Given the difficulties in payments when it comes to gray-market dick pills, I’m surprised he wasn’t an early bitcoin whale and made more than enough from that to just retire.

hobs 3y ago

I almost was very sad because I thought this was referring to hex.tech which I love and is great

confoundcofound 3y ago

The biggest lie in crypto is that tokens are bought for utility and not speculative gains. I don't know if it's delusion or intentional deception. I have friends who are "thought leaders" in the space, who opine on the disruptive potential of crypto yet spend their days tweeting about the latest memecoin that just 100x'd. The entire concept of crypto "value" rests upon the marriage of token utility and economic value. Financial gain is baked into the mechanic. And between the two, people care far more about financial gain. It's a fundamental misalignment of incentives.

dboreham 3y ago
To be fair the same thing happens in the regular world. e.g. look at a list of the richest people in the USA and see how they made their money.
- mikeyouse 3y ago
  Elon, Bezos, Bill Gates, Ellison, Buffet, Paige, Brin, Ballmer, Bloomberg, Walton --- which of those billion/trillion dollar companies do you think in any way compares to the shambolic crypto world?
  - fnimick 3y ago
    I mean, we joke that Oracle is a legal company with an engineering department... but at least they build things.
    - mikeyouse 3y ago
      Right. I don't like most of the people on that list and e.g. Oracle is a mess of a company that is actively hostile to the software world -- but they still sold $42 billion worth of goods/services to willing customers last year. Nothing at all like crypto trading.
- mgraczyk 3y ago
  The 20 richest people in the USA all make their wealth via profitable companies that have returned value to shareholders.

dotnet00 3y ago

Centralized ~exchanges~ (edit: services) defeat the point of crypto (particularly of a blockchain), so people responsible for said centralization are only in it for the money. Thus, the question with all of these companies is how long before they get outed for scamming their customers.

kelthuzad 3y ago
That's a reductionist view, there can be many reasons why somebody would want to temporarily park a portion of their assets on a centralized exchange. It's a a trade off between convenience, security, higher liquidity, trading opportunities et cetera, these are just some that come to mind. One can do all of that and still have the majority of their assets in cold storage. The world is not white and black.
- bennyschmidt 3y ago
  From the Bitcoin whitepaper: "A common solution is to introduce a trusted central authority ... The problem with this solution is that the fate of the entire money system depends on the company" The vision of course did not include centralized authorities, it's counter to the entire purpose. We already have had digital banks, crypto is not about having digital convenience. It's not the "exchange" part that wasn't envisioned, it's the "centralized" part, because that is the same thing as a bank. That's what the SEC (rightly) made their case on with Coinbase and others. Bitconnect, FTX, Coinbase... that kind of thing was not envisioned originally and is counter to the whole concept and purpose of crypto.
  - kelthuzad 3y ago
    "One can do all of that and still have the majority of their assets in cold storage."
    - bennyschmidt 3y ago
      Nice try with the quotes hahah. But no, that is not mentioned in the whitepaper, and you are way off now: Cold storage is a cloud term for long-term storage, it has nothing to do with "cold wallets" - the term centralized exchanges use for "off-chain" assets. Also this (from bitcoin whitepaper): "A block header with no transactions would be about 80 bytes. If we suppose blocks are generated every 10 minutes, 80 bytes * 6 * 24 * 365 = 4.2MB per year. With computer systems typically selling with 2GB of RAM as of 2008, and Moore's Law predicting current growth of 1.2GB per year, storage should not be a problem even if the block headers must be kept in memory." I'm convinced 90% of people talking about crypto don't get it.

bebop404 3y ago

It's a shame it took this long to go after such a blatant Ponzi. There is even an ad for this scheme painted on a wall near my home (in Mexico), so one would hope that the US will not be the only country where he will face charges.

kelthuzad 3y ago
It's crazy how many crypto natives were warning "hexicans" about hex and pointing out the most obvious indicator that it's a scam, namely Richard Heart defrauding them, yet most of his fanboys were not even willing to listen or evaluate the evidence with an open mind.
- HappySweeney 3y ago
  That would have had them admitting to themselves that their money is gone, including the promised gains they likely already spent.
- DANmode 3y ago
  Came to this thread just to say RIP Hexicans, thanks for providing the space!
3LazTjBv-f 3y ago
I liked local "Italian restaurant ad" Ponzi. I mean it still looked like scam to me, but I can understand why people fell for it. Scheme can only last for few months, a year at most, so the organizer must be ready to GTFO as soon as it reaches the peak. Participants are offered $1k/months for placing the restaurant ad on their car (banner behind rear windshield) but asked for $3k or $4k "security deposit". Of course the "restaurant ad" actually only said "I make $1k/month with this ad, call xxx to learn how".

DonHopkins 3y ago

Richard Hart (aka "Spam King" Richard J Schueler) has an account on Hacker News that he used to shill his scams and attempt to recruit gullible HN developers to debase themselves by working on his shitcoins, just like Rick and Morty's "Glooty" alien who's always asking "Do you want to develop an app?": https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=RichardHeart https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=RichardHeart https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=RichardHeart https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=RichardHeart https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27139757 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27139757 RichardHeart on May 13, 2021 | prev | next [–] Elon is still promoting Dogecoin which is also proof of work. Lots of people will be harmed when it crashes. Nearly all cryptocurrencies crash 85% every once in a while. DonHopkins on May 13, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–] Humor: So I'm sure your explanation of why somebody hasn't already successfully implemented practical proof of stake before is totally credible and unbiased! ;) Not Humor: If somebody will work on it for free, do you promise to pay them in your own cryptocurrency? "Will work for stake!" RichardHeart on May 13, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–] You don't have to destroy the environment to maintain a database. There's other ways to achieve censorship resistance than waste. Blockchains are are all social consensus anyway. DonHopkins on May 13, 2021 | root | parent | next [–] "Do you want to develop my new cryptocurrency?" is the new "Do you want to develop an app?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVy0JWX5XEY&ab_channel=AdultSwim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVy0JWX5XEY&ab_channel=Adult... Edit: [You spoiled the joke by retroactively editing your post and removing your amusing disclaimer that you had a financial stake in shilling POS, and your hilarious call for programmers to help you develop your new cryptocurrency! "Dodge, dodge." That's what makes you so funny! The "Glooty" character parody is spot on.] RichardHeart on May 13, 2021 | root | parent | next [–] I see your joke and raise you one joke https://paywithexposure.com/ https://paywithexposure.com/ Also, you should actually watch the interview on the page you just linked. It's amazing. DonHopkins on May 13, 2021 | root | parent | next [–] Not a joke: Confronting Richard Heart of HEX - SPAM KING and Crypto Scammer https://web.archive.org/web/20201115205631/https://www.cointelligence.com/content/confronting-richard-heart-of-hex-spam-king-and-crypto-scammer/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201115205631/https://www.coint... So will you again confirm what the article claims you already confirmed? >Richard Heart was sued for spamming in 2002 under WA state law. Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/peacefire-org-beats-spammers-in-court/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/peacefire-org-beats-spammers-i... >During the interview at ANON, Richard confirmed that he was one of the first people in the world to be sued for online spam, back in 2002. This shows us Richard has experience abusing unregulated markets, as he is doing with crypto these days. Is this an accurate quote of your own words? >When I pressed the matter and asked for a simple “yes” or “no” as to whether he, as the FOUNDER of HEX, knows who benefits from the funds sent to the “Origin Address” he flat-out said “I’m dodging your question.” Dodging the question! He proceeds to repeat “Dodge, dodge.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367412 DonHopkins on Nov 28, 2021 | parent | context | favorite | on: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consens... Speaking of POS scammers, what ever happened to Richard "Dodge Dodge" Heart, winner of the "Golden Pump Award" for "Best New Scam" for his POS get-rich-quick pyramid scheme called "HEX", who falsely claims that proof of stake is a proven successful replacement for proof of work, and who shills HEX and tries to recruit unsuspecting developers and victims here on HN and many other places, by making illegal false claims of providing CDs (certificates of deposit)? To be fair, I'd love to hear him chime in on this discussion, and tell his side of the story, relate his exploits and prosecution as a viagra spammer, and finally answer all those unanswered questions people have asked him, to which he replied "Dodge Dodge". Not that he's unique or special: POS shills like him are a dime a dozen. But he hangs out here and shills on HN, and has won awards for his deceptive scams (and also lost court cases too), and claims to "help people" on his web site, so I hope to hear from him again. https://richardheart.com/ https://richardheart.com/ His real name is actually Richard J Schueler, under which he is famously known as the "Spam King", for being one of the first people in the world to be successfully sued for online spam, specifically the Viagra spam scheme that he ran from Panama (which he lost). Richard Hart (aka "Spam King" Richard J Schueler) wins the "Golden Pump Award" for "Best New Scam" for his POS shitcoin Ponzi scheme "HEX": https://twitter.com/JuanSGalt/status/1233242355995750400 https://twitter.com/JuanSGalt/status/1233242355995750400 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=857&v=tf-lJu5iDh8&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=WorldCryptoNetwork https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=857&v=tf-lJu5iDh... Peacefire.org beats spammers in court. https://www.zdnet.com/article/peacefire-org-beats-spammers-in-court/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/peacefire-org-beats-spammers-i... >Free-speech group Peacefire.org wins a legal round in its fight against unsolicited e-mail, invoking Washington state's anti-spam law. >The King County District Court in Bellevue, Wash., on Monday granted Peacefire $1,000 in damages in each of three complaints filed by Peacefire Webmaster Bennett Haselton. The small-claims suit alleged that Red Moss Media, Paulann Allison and Richard Schueler [who now operates under the pseudonum "Richard Hart"] sent unsolicited commercial messages to Haselton that bore deceptive information such as a forged return e-mail address or misleading subject line. Confronting Richard Heart of HEX - SPAM KING and Crypto Scammer https://web.archive.org/web/20201115205631/https://www.cointelligence.com/content/confronting-richard-heart-of-hex-spam-king-and-crypto-scammer/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201115205631/https://www.coint... >During ANON Summit 2020, I participated in a “fireside chat” with Richard Heart, founder of HEX. HEX is one of the most sophisticated, if not THE most sophisticated scams I have ever seen. >Why was I so aggressive with Richard? I have a lot of experience fighting with scammers, at events, and in online discussions. I’m familiar with their bullshit techniques. Richard is the sort of “master debater” who will answer a question without actually answering the content of the question. I watched more than 6 hours of his previous talks and learned how to tell when he was trying to avoid a real answer. >If you don't want to sit through hours of interviews yourself, this 4 minute video not only sheds light on Heart's motivation for establishing HEX, but also shows just how abrasive and crude he can be. This video was not created or edited by Cointelligence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MIdlXHedlU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MIdlXHedlU >I want to draw your attention to the quote in the video above: "What am I going to make more money doing? Promoting my token, that I own a whole ton of? Or promoting bitcoin, where I own one-one zillionth of the available supply?" He's clearly in this to make money for himself in any way possible. [...] >When asked why HEX was not categorized as a security, at around the 21 minute mark, Richard offered an explanation that has no legal grounding. On the website, HEX claims that it is "The first high interest blockchain certificate of deposit." However, HEX has no legal authority to issue CDs. Richard is illegally claiming to provide CDs when in fact the instruments are nothing but glorified savings accounts. More quotes: "What's up now, fggot? What are you going to do now, you little btch? Get the fuck out of here! That's the dumbest piece of shit I've ever seen in my fucking life. [...] Let me give you some more bullshit, ok?" -Richard Heart aka Richard J Schueler Richard Heart - Spam, ICOs, and Death Threats https://imnotdead.co.uk/blog/richard-heart https://imnotdead.co.uk/blog/richard-heart Richard James Schueler - Friggin Spam King https://web.archive.org/web/20190416235350/http://www.panama-guide.com/article.php/20070926122502156 https://web.archive.org/web/20190416235350/http://www.panama... Why HEX is a Ponzi and not a solid investment (Part 2): Richard Heart https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/kwhjxa/why_hex_is_a_ponzi_and_not_a_solid_investment/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/kwhjxa/why_... >During the interview at ANON, Richard confirmed that he was one of the first people in the world to be sued for online spam, back in 2002. This shows us Richard has experience abusing unregulated markets, as he is doing with crypto these days. Richard: this an accurate quote of your own words? >When I pressed the matter and asked for a simple “yes” or “no” as to whether he, as the FOUNDER of HEX, knows who benefits from the funds sent to the “Origin Address” he flat-out said “I’m dodging your question.” Dodging the question! He proceeds to repeat “Dodge, dodge.” Richard, your tag-line "Do you want to develop my new cryptocurrency?" is the new "Do you want to develop an app?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVy0JWX5XEY&ab_channel=AdultSwim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVy0JWX5XEY&ab_channel=Adult... "Dodge, dodge." -Richard Heart aka Richard J Schueler

paulpauper 3y ago

meh civil suit. these people are used to being sued or threated lawsuits .

sdfghswe 3y ago

[flagged]

houseatrielah 3y ago

I had some interest in HEX after I saw an airplane with a "BUY HEX" banner fly over my house. The major trick is the decimal point. Launch a crypto worth 0.000000001 USD per unit, then when it goes to 0.0000001 USD per unit because of low supply, scream into YouTube: "I GAVE YOU 100X PEOPLE, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?"

DANmode 3y ago
> I had some interest in HEX after I saw an airplane with a "BUY HEX" banner fly over my house. These sorts of advertisements have been an anti-signal for some time...

davidgerard 3y ago

fun fact, Richard used to sell email spam software. Is shitcoin pumping a step up or a step down? Richard is a very charming fellow, very likable, but in a way that cautions you not to let any of your money within a mile of him.

DonHopkins 3y ago
Charming??! I've known enough of his kind that his "charm" immediately sets off all of my Malignant Narcissist Klaxons. He's charming in the same sense that the creepy guy driving the windowless "FREE CANDY" van is generous. And you only mentioned the tip of the Spamberg -- it goes MUCH deeper: His real name is actually Richard J Schueler, under which he is famously known as the "Spam King", for being one of the first people in the world to be successfully sued for online spam, specifically the Viagra spam scheme that he ran from Panama (which he lost). Richard Heart - Spam, ICOs, and Death Threats: https://imnotdead.co.uk/blog/richard-heart https://imnotdead.co.uk/blog/richard-heart PSA: Crypto HEX Founder is Actually Notorious Criminal ‘Spam King’: https://blockcast.cc/news/psa-crypto-hex-founder-is-actually-notorious-criminal-spam-king/ https://blockcast.cc/news/psa-crypto-hex-founder-is-actually... Richard James Schueler - Friggin Spam King: https://web.archive.org/web/20190416235350/http://www.panama-guide.com/article.php/20070926122502156 https://web.archive.org/web/20190416235350/http://www.panama... HEX Founder found to be Notorious Criminal: https://cryptotraderspro.com/hex-founder-outed-spam-king/ https://cryptotraderspro.com/hex-founder-outed-spam-king/ Why HEX is a Ponzi and not a solid investment (Part 2): Richard Heart: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/kwhjxa/why_hex_is_a_ponzi_and_not_a_solid_investment/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/kwhjxa/why_... >During the interview at ANON, Richard confirmed that he was one of the first people in the world to be sued for online spam, back in 2002. This shows us Richard has experience abusing unregulated markets, as he is doing with crypto these days. Hasn't the last eight or so years of Trump trained people to instantly see through that kind of bullshit, and easily recognize a malignant narcissist for what they are, or does he specialize in fooling the same kind of people Trump still fools? What kind of person actually makes videos and web pages about themself with titles like: RICHARD HEART IS THE BEST PERSON EVER! I OWN THE WORLD'S LARGEST DIAMOND. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TQGzltcKNk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TQGzltcKNk Richard Heart is a force for good: https://richardheart.com/ https://richardheart.com/

sergiotapia 3y ago

[flagged]

bhouston 3y ago
That didn't seem to help SBF though - he is still arrested and bring prosecuted for his financial crimes. Also SBF contributed to both D and R equally apparently - but he did his R contributions dark to avoid scrutiny, but is that claim of his true? I don't know: Although federal election receipts show that Bankman-Fried donated almost exclusively to Democrats, he claimed on a November phone call with YouTuber Tiffany Fong that he donated an equal amount to Republicans and Democrats. “All my Republican donations were dark,” he said, referring to political donations that are not publicly disclosed in FEC filings. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the f—k out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.” Given that he donated nearly $40 million to Democrats in the 2022 election cycle—and he admitted to giving an equal amount to Republicans—his total political contributions may have actually been around $80 million. https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donations/# https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donatio...
- sergiotapia 3y ago
  Please ;) "Federal prosecutors are dropping campaign finance violation charges" "Bankman-Fried — who is accused of stealing from customers of his now-defunct FTX cryptocurrency exchange — still faces 12 other charges in the case, though five more of the counts are still in question" https://nypost.com/2023/07/27/feds-drop-one-charge-against-sam-bankman-fried/ https://nypost.com/2023/07/27/feds-drop-one-charge-against-s...
  - bhouston 3y ago
    The reason is because the extradition agreement didn't mention those charges, which is a technicality unfortunately. He is still be prosecuted for his financial crimes.

jgalt212 3y ago

Richard Heart is a force for good. https://richardheart.com/ https://richardheart.com/

wonderwonder 3y ago

The craziest part to me is that he was so incredibly open about it and people just kept giving him $. He just made video after video showing himself wearing outfits worth tens of thousands of dollars. Not a video about something else where he happened to be dressed up, but the video was literally about how much the items he was wearing cost. On top of that he looked absolutely ridiculous. I have never seen such a real life example of money not being able to buy class.

ChainOfFools 3y ago
I had the strange luck to have known Richard Hart before he became a crypto huckster. In the year or so leading up to his transition from random spammer nobody to wealthy scamming random nobody, he was pretty aggressively critical and cynical about all things cryptocurrency, especially about the abject gullibility and willful ignorance of the people who sign on to all of the ideological nonsense about the blockchain and decentralization, and people who take all of the obviously manipulated metrics about market cap, volume and activity at face value. He could have been your very standard hn cryptocritic, going by his stated positions. I'm not sure exactly what happened to him in the year or so between when I last encountered him in certain telegram channels, but I get the sense that his reaction to the shit show of cryptocurrency was rather than settling for being another Cassandra with a lot to say and no money to say it about the dangers of the crypto Ponzi scene, he went full Mirror Universe and decided to simply take advantage of the people who he had contempt for, as openly and boldly and shamelessly and transparently as he possibly could. This way he wouldn't have to feel as guilty about fooling them. Like a Stephen Colbert or Sacha Baron Cohen but with more meanness and less talent, and without any remorse for bilking the naive minnows snagged in the bycatch of his cryptobro trawling net.
- wonderwonder 3y ago
  He very much took advantage of the adage, "a fool and his money are soon parted". On some level I can't even blame him. People are literally sending hundreds/ thousands of dollars in eth to people that just list an address and give vague mention of getting something valuable back. He probably figured, why not me? He could have just moved to Russia and have been fine. SEC frowns upon blatant scams though.

thesausageking 3y ago

The SEC is just the wrong organization to be enforcing laws in crypto. This was a scam that was done out in the open and launched 4 years ago. People conned into buying this have already lost their money and they're not getting it back. The founder will use some of the $1B+ he's made of it to defend himself in a long, drawn out court case that the SEC will eventually settle. The SEC's purpose is supposed to be to protect investors and no one is being protected by this.

paulpauper 3y ago
the sec also does not bring criminal investigation, only refer. it's not even that effective as a deterrent. only jail stops criminals, not lawsuits.
WorldMaker 3y ago
If not the SEC then who? It took decades before Bernie Madoff's crimes came to light under SEC investigation (and then eventual criminal prosecution). Most of his victims had already lost their money and were never getting it back, even with the criminal suits they eventually joined that was mostly to show justice to Madoff not to recover lost funds. From that perspective, 4 years is possibly a record in speediness for scams of this scale. (Cryptocurrencies sure have sped up the scams, but also seem to have greatly sped up the investigations into the spams, perhaps in a way that some will find ironic.) The SEC can't protect all investors a priori (ahead of time). There's always going to be a long tail of investigations into past misdeeds and airing the dirty laundry. In theory the more dirty laundry the SEC can air from previous misdeeds the more it educates the public on things to look for and the more it assures would-be scammers that eventually they will be caught and will have to face the American justice system. (Whether or not you think the American justice system capable of doling out enough criminal charges that stick to these sorts of injustices, it is always still worth trying.)
- x-complexity 3y ago
  > If not the SEC then who? For US entities other than the SEC in particular, the CFTC that can also handle this problem if the token's not a security. However, I'm extremely weary of this immediate ceding of control, as it gives back power to the State. The ideal would be that such products would be marked as high-risk by default, and that it should be made explicitly clear that there's a high chance (> 90%) of failure in such a product's early stages, with ample warnings, cautions, & checks detailing so. Past a certain point, it should be acknowledged that the individual made the decision to invest in such a product. The aforementioned warnings & checks on all new products & services by default will make that boundary clear, with the lack of said checks making it visible . > It took decades before Bernie Madoff's crimes came to light under SEC investigation (and then eventual criminal prosecution). Most of his victims had already lost their money and were never getting it back, even with the criminal suits they eventually joined that was mostly to show justice to Madoff not to recover lost funds. Bernie Madoff's scheme was prolonged due to the reputation of the man himself, and from A trusting that B said that he was trustworthy, based on C's vouch of his trustworthiness, based on D's vouch, ad infinitum. After establishing the minimal amount of people to vouch for him, the effects from said connected network compounded as more people trusted him based on that network. Again, this circles back to the main issue regarding trust. It's way too easy to earn trust just because you look/act some way, were a part of something, and/or made connections to the right people. Trust should be isolated to a particular venture/effort & no further, and if someone wanted to try something else that was at least 2 steps removed from their previous ventures, that trust should be rebuilt from scratch & not based on existing efforts made.

kane231 3y ago

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mancerayder 3y ago

Is this the same guy that made millions as a spam king decades ago, lives or lived in Panama and made the news due to a neighbor murder, and appeared until recently on podcasts /YouTube crypto discussions and interviews dressed as a velvet king? Surely not that guy. Who would have thought he could be blowing smoke somehow.

Elizabethruth55 3y ago

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MarBohm 3y ago

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JuanaHer000 3y ago

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