Vietnam charges seven over HiAnime, the piracy site that briefly out-streamed Disney+
Police say the operators earned nearly $13 million from ads across 100+ sites hosting 26,000 pirated anime titles.
Key points
- Vietnamese police have arrested and charged seven people accused of running HiAnime, the largest anime piracy site before its June 2025 shutdown.
- Investigators say the group built more than 100 websites hosting over 26,000 pirated anime films.
- Prosecutors put the illegal advertising revenue at roughly $12.85 million between 2020 and April 2026.
- Four defendants are in custody; three are under house arrest.
- The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment credited U.S. Homeland Security Investigations and the Department of Justice for supporting the multi-year case.
Seven people in Vietnam are facing prosecution over HiAnime, a free anime streaming site that at its peak pulled more traffic than Disney+ and Crunchyroll combined.
HiAnime wasn't a hacking crew or a ransomware gang. It was a piracy business built on advertising, not subscriptions, and it grew enormous. Between late 2024 and 2025 it drew several hundred million visitors a month. The site started on the Zoro.to domain, rebranded to Aniwatch in July 2023, then to HiAnime in March 2024. The European Commission added it to its Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List; the United States Trade Representative put it on the Notorious Markets list. It went dark in June.
Who ran HiAnime, and what are they charged with?
Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security says seven suspects ran the operation and a web of related sites. All seven are charged with copyright infringement and money laundering, which means moving criminal proceeds through legitimate-looking accounts to hide their origin. Four are detained. Three are confined to their homes while the case proceeds.
Police allege the group set up more than 100 websites and uploaded over 26,000 pirated anime films, generating about $12.85 million in advertising revenue between 2020 and April 2026, as first reported by BleepingComputer. Two Vietnamese units led the investigation: C03, the Economic Crimes Investigation Department, and A05, the Department of Cybersecurity and High-Tech Crime Prevention.
Who pushed the case forward?
The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, known as ACE, confirmed the arrests on Thursday. It's a coalition of more than 50 studios and networks focused on shutting down illegal streaming operations. "ACE applauds the actions of Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security," the group said, thanking U.S. Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Department of Justice for backing what it called a multi-year investigation.
The HiAnime case follows a similar action earlier this year. In March, ACE announced the dismantling of AnimePlay, another large anime piracy platform that held more than 60 terabytes of shows and movies and had over 5 million registered users. ACE pulled its hosting servers and domains offline. The money-laundering charge in the HiAnime case is worth watching: it's the same thread running through the coordinated U.S. Actions we covered in June against HuiOne and the Prince Group network, where cross-border advertising and payment flows made prosecution harder and slower.
Should ordinary viewers be worried?
Probably not in a security sense, but there's a practical angle. Free piracy sites live on advertising, and the ad networks that serve them frequently push malicious downloads or scam pop-ups. Anyone who used HiAnime regularly should treat anime-related downloads from that period with suspicion, run the antivirus tool built into their computer, and change passwords for any account they logged into on the site.
If you paid nothing for a service, someone else paid for your attention. Here, prosecutors say that someone was the advertising industry, to the tune of nearly $13 million.
Legal alternatives like Crunchyroll, Netflix and Disney+ exist for a reason. What this case really signals is that piracy operations are now drawing the kind of cross-border police coordination usually reserved for financial crime. The laundering charge isn't decorative. It's the mechanism that lets U.S. Agencies join a Vietnamese prosecution, and it's likely to become standard in cases like this.
