American businessman Richard Heart has been charged with defrauding investors to buy the 555-carat black diamond “The Enigma”, the world’s largest black natural color diamond, for $4.3 million, according to IDEX Online.
The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) in Washington charged Heart and his crypto companies Hex, PulseChain, and PulseX, with “conducting unregistered offerings of asset securities that raised over $1 billion” as well as the misappropriation of at least $12 million to buy McLaren and Ferrari sports cars, four Rolex watches worth more than $3 million, and “The Enigma.”
Sotheby’s conducted an exclusive online auction in February for the diamond, which was presented as a single lot and sold without a minimum price. Although Sotheby’s did not disclose the buyer’s identity, the 42-year-old Richard Heart revealed his acquisition to his 180,000 followers on Twitter. Heart said he’d be paying for the purchase with cryptocurrency and would re-name it the Hex.com diamond, after the blockchain platform he founded.
Prior to the auction, Sotheby’s said the 55-facet black stone was “thought to have been created either from a meteoric impact or having actually emerged from a diamond-bearing asteroid that collided with Earth.”
Carbonado diamonds are extremely rare, with an age ranging between 2.6 to 3.8 billion years. They comprise traces of nitrogen and hydrogen that are abundant in the expanses of interstellar space, along with osbornite, a mineral uniquely found in meteors.
