On March 20, 2025, Texas Securities Commissioner Travis J. Iles entered Emergency Cease and Desist Order ENF-25-CDO-1889 against The Apertum Foundation, Josip Heit, Dirc Zahlmann, Bruce Innes Wylde Hughes and Dennis Christopher Loos. The order concerned APTM, a token deployed on a proprietary blockchain developed by GSB Group. Its allegations were not narrow. The Texas State Securities Board alleged the respondents were offering unregistered securities, acting as unregistered dealers under Section 4004.051 of the Securities Act, engaging in fraud in connection with the offer of securities, and making offers containing statements that were materially misleading or otherwise likely to deceive. The timing was the sharpest element: the TSSB alleged that Heit, Zahlmann and Hughes had begun launching the new scheme in 2023, before the earlier Order 1879 landed, purportedly halted it, and then resumed shortly after executing the term sheet for the settlement that was meant to resolve their previous conduct. On July 31, 2025, the same commissioner set the order aside.
The instrument that ended it was Order No. ENF-25-CDO-1891, titled an Agreed Order Setting Aside Emergency Order. The word agreed matters. This was not a ruling by an administrative law judge after a hearing on the evidence. It was a negotiated disposition, entered under Section 4007.104(e) of the Securities Act, in which the commissioner recorded that the findings of fact constituted sufficient basis for setting aside the emergency order as to all respondents. The operative line reads that the Emergency Cease and Desist Order is set aside.
What the Order Had Alleged
Before it was withdrawn, the March order described an operation already at scale. It stated that 22,000 unique wallets had submitted more than 268,000 transactions on the new blockchain, that $3.5 million in assets had been transferred to it, and that APTM had realised what the order called an insane 8,000 percent increase in value. It alleged the token was being marketed as a lucrative investment opportunity notwithstanding whatever limited utility it had in paying gas fees on its own network, and that the respondents were acting to inflate its price by increasing demand while restricting supply. It noted the migration of GS Partners, the operation covered by the 2023 order, onto the Apertum blockchain.
The proceeding was contested hard. Apertum was represented by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart and Sullivan. A notice of hearing was filed at the State Office of Administrative Hearings under Docket No. 312-25-16274. In May 2025 SOAH determined that the hearing would have to be held in person, which would have required Heit, Zahlmann, Hughes and Loos to appear personally in Texas. Their lawyers moved to be relieved of that requirement, citing the burden of travel and questions of proportionality. A hearing block was set. It never took place. Court filings from the proceeding also record that Hughes, Zahlmann and Loos had not filed timely requests for a hearing.
Vindication, and What an Agreed Set-Aside Actually Establishes
The response from the respondents’ side was emphatic. Avi Perry, co-chair of the Securities Litigation Group at Quinn Emanuel, said the case should never have been brought, that the Texas Securities Board’s allegations were incorrect, and that the firm credited the Board for acknowledging its error and dismissing the case. Heit said that from day one the Apertum Foundation had offered a compliant, safe platform and cutting-edge technology, that he had promised to defend aggressively against mistaken allegations, and that the dismissal confirms he did nothing wrong. In July 2025, the month the order was set aside, the price of APTM rose by more than 140 percent, a move attributed in part to news of the legal outcome.
An agreed set-aside is a real outcome and it should be reported as one. It is also not the same thing as an adjudication. No administrative law judge weighed the evidence and found the allegations unproven. The order was vacated by agreement before any hearing occurred, which leaves the underlying factual questions unresolved rather than answered. Legal commentators covering the proceeding at the time made the same observation: the lifting of the order does not constitute exoneration in the sense of a judicial finding of innocence. Both statements are true at once. Texas withdrew its allegations, and Texas never had to prove them.
The 2023 Order Against Three of Them Is Final and Cannot Be Appealed
What the 2025 set-aside did not touch is the earlier record. Filings in the Apertum proceeding note that Emergency Cease and Desist Order 1879, entered in November 2023, is final and not subject to appeal as it relates to Swiss Valorem Bank Ltd., Bruce Innes Wylde Hughes, Dirc Zahlmann and Aline Lima, because those respondents did not file timely requests for a hearing. The September 2024 settlement did not disturb that either. The Texas State Securities Board recorded that its consent order does not apply to the prior fraud allegations against those same four respondents.
So the position after July 2025 is layered rather than clean. The 2025 Apertum order is gone, by agreement, with no findings against anyone. The 2023 order stands as a final, unappealable matter against Hughes, Zahlmann, Lima and Swiss Valorem. Heit’s own 2023 exposure was folded into the settlement whose refunds, as we reported, have still produced no determinations. Texas also set aside an emergency order against Billionico Academy, another entity in the same orbit, in June 2025.
The Names That Carried Over From 2023
The 2025 Apertum order did not introduce new people. It named the same men who had appeared in the coordinated enforcement of November 2023, with one addition. Heit, Zahlmann and Hughes were all named in California’s desist and refrain order. Heit, Hughes, Zahlmann and Aline Lima were named in Texas Order ENF-23-CDO-1879 and again in New Hampshire’s order. Dennis Christopher Loos joined them in the 2025 filing.
That continuity was the point Texas was making. Its 2025 order opened by noting the earlier enforcement and alleging the same individuals had previously perpetrated illegal and fraudulent securities schemes targeting investors throughout the United States, including Texas.
Conclusion
Texas alleged in March 2025 that Josip Heit, Dirc Zahlmann, Bruce Innes Wylde Hughes and Dennis Loos had built a new token scheme while Heit was in the middle of settling the last one, and that they had resumed the plan shortly after signing the term sheet. It alleged fraud, unregistered securities and unregistered dealing, and cited 22,000 wallets and an 8,000 percent price rise. It fought through a hearing schedule and an order requiring the men to appear in Texas in person. Then, on July 31, it agreed to set the whole thing aside. Quinn Emanuel called it vindication. APTM rose 140 percent that month. No judge ever heard the evidence, and the 2023 order against three of the same men remains final and beyond appeal.
