Richard Heart bought millions worth of watches, cars, and the Enigma black diamond.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged cryptocurrency businessman and influencer Richard Heart with scamming investors and misusing millions of their dollars to buy luxury goods, sports cars, watches, and gems. 

“Heart called on investors to buy crypto asset securities in offerings that he failed to register. He then defrauded those investors by spending some of their crypto assets on exorbitant luxury goods,” Eric Werner, chief of the SEC’s Fort Worth Regional Office, was quoted as saying.

The crypto personality, who has a large following on YouTube and social media, bragged with Lamborgini cars, Rolex watches, and Gucci bags, among others. 

In 2022, he also bought a 555-carat diamond known as Enigma for 4.3 million dollars at a Sotheby’s auction – the world’s largest black diamond, according to SEC fraud filing documents made public last week.

The rare type of carbonado stone can only be found in alluvial deposits in Brazil and the Central African Republic.

Heart, who in 2018 began marketing a product called Hex, claimed it was the world’s first high-yield “blockchain certificate of deposit.” Next later, he reported the sale of 2.3 million Ethereum worth of Hex, valued 678 million dollars, making investors believe that the demand for Hex was soaring. In reality, it was him and a group of associates who had made those purchases in order to give a false appearance of demand. 

Between 2021 and 2022, Heart made two more unregistered crypto offerings related to an alleged crypto asset network, PulseChain, and an alleged crypto trading platform, PulseX, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency.