Vietnam Indicts HiAnime Operators Over $12.85 Million in Pirate Ad Revenue

With more than 150 million monthly visits, HiAnime was one of the most popular piracy portals to ever exist.

The anime streaming giant, previously known as Zoro.to and Aniwatch, shut down in March without offering an explanation.

Four months later, Vietnamese police arrested four of its alleged operators, and charged seven people in total.

The authorities didn’t name the site at the time, but we identified it through footage aired by state broadcaster VTV. Vietnam’s Supreme People’s Procuracy now names HiAnime directly, in an indictment that also reveals where the money came from.

Seven Defendants Head to Trial

Today, the procuracy indicted Nguyễn Đình Minh Khoa and six co-defendants, who will be tried by the Hanoi People’s Court. Khoa, Nguyễn Trung Anh, Nguyễn Hoàng Thanh and Nguyễn Đình Xuân are charged with copyright infringement and money laundering. The other three only face copyright infringement charges.

According to state news agency TTXVN, the case originated with a complaint filed with the Ministry of Public Security by Rouse, the law firm that represents the Motion Picture Association (MPA) in Vietnam.

This complaint was filed on May 7, which was also the first day of a nationwide crackdown on pirate sites, triggered by an urgent order from Vietnam’s Prime Minister.

The HiAnime investigation eventually traced the operation back to early 2019, when Khoa allegedly came up with the idea to build pirate streaming sites that were easier to use than existing ones.

Khoa reportedly bought more than 100 domain names and worked on search engine optimization. Trung Anh managed the servers, Xuân programmed the sites, and Thanh designed them and handled the payouts. To expand the operation, co-defendant Nguyễn Phước Toàn was allegedly put in charge of the Zoro, Aniwatch and HiAnime pages on Reddit.

HiAnime wasn’t the only brand. The indictment also mentions Sflix/Myflixerz and 9animetv. Between mid-2019 and March 2026, the group allegedly offered 26,000 TV series and 7,500 anime titles through its network of sites.

12.85 Million USDT Through PropellerAds

The prosecution says that Khoa was in charge of the advertising. He allegedly dealt with advertising platform PropellerAds via Skype and Telegram, and placed its ads on the various pirate sites.

“Through the Propeller Ads platform, the defendants received a total of 12.85 million USDT, equivalent to 12.85 million USD,” Báo Bảo vệ pháp luật’s report reads (translated).

According to TTXVN, PropellerAds paid out 12.85 million USDT which was sent to the group’s crypto wallets.

The indictment notes that Khoa personally received 2.5 million USDT from 2020 onward, while Thanh collected 10.35 million USDT through wallets on the Binance exchange starting in September 2023. After costs, the four main defendants split the profits equally, which earned each of them at least 50 billion Vietnamese dong, roughly $2 million.

PropellerAds has been criticized by Hollywood before. The MPA recommended the advertising company for the USTR’s annual notorious markets list, arguing that many pirate sites use it to generate revenue. PropellerAds rejected these claims and, in 2023, accused the MPA of harassment and defamation.

Whether PropellerAds was aware of HiAnime’s activities is unknown.

Cloudflare Storage, DMCA Subpoenas

The indictment also mentions other intermediaries. Trung Anh allegedly rented servers from hosting company Evoluso between 2019 and 2022. From 2023 until March 2026, the group’s storage system relied on services from Cloudflare.

The MPA previously tried to identify the people behind HiAnime through Cloudflare. In October 2024, it requested a DMCA subpoena requiring the company to share information on hianime.to and several related domains. A year later, it requested another one, listing a new batch of HiAnime branded domains.

Whether these subpoenas produced any information that helped the Vietnamese investigation is unknown.

From Porsche to G63

Over the years, the sites repeatedly received DMCA copyright warnings from Google, prosecutors say. However, the defendants kept changing the site addresses, so they could continue streaming and collecting ad revenue. This matches with the rebranding efforts.

Early this year, the defendants allegedly began to cover their tracks. In February, fearing detection, Trung Anh had his sister register his Porsche in her name. Xuân did the same with a Mercedes, which he registered to his father and later his sister, while also changing its license plate.

By March 2026, as the authorities stepped up their action against copyright infringement, the defendants decided to stop operating and deleted the websites they had used,” Báo Bảo vệ pháp luật reports (translated).

The money laundering charges are linked to how the advertising revenue was spent. The four main defendants allegedly moved the USDT through several crypto wallets, sold it for Vietnamese dong, and transferred it to personal bank accounts. The money was then used to buy property and cars.

According to the indictment, Khoa spent more than 24 billion dong, starting with a Porsche Panamera that he registered in his wife’s name in January 2022. He later sold it, and used the proceeds and more crypto money to buy a Mercedes G63 in April 2024. That car was sold for 8.5 billion dong, which went toward a Land Rover Autobiography earlier this year.

The other main defendants allegedly spent their share on cars and property too, as can be seen in the summary below.

This high-profile case is also being watched in Washington. In May, the USTR opened a Section 301 investigation into Vietnam’s copyright enforcement, which could lead to tariffs. In its response, Vietnam cited the HiAnime prosecution to show that it is taking piracy seriously.

The defendants are not the first pirate site operators to face trial in Vietnam. Two operators of the Fmovies piracy ring dodged prison last year, as they received suspended sentences.

That was a thorn in the side of rightsholders. The USTR also flagged the issue, urging Vietnam to seek “deterrent-level prison sentences.”

None of the reports we have seen mentions a trial date. Whether the Hanoi court will hand out the deterrent sentences Hollywood and the USTR have called for has yet to be seen.

The details of the indictment were reported by Vietnamese newspaper Báo Bảo vệ pháp luật and state news agency TTXVN, through VietnamPlus. Quotes from the newspaper’s report on the indictment were translated from Vietnamese by TorrentFreak.