Vietnamese authorities have initiated a criminal investigation into Meta Whale.

Arrest warrants have been issued against top promoters, following confirmation Meta Whale operates illegally.

Known action by Vietnamese authorities commenced on October 11th. As reported by VietnamNet on December 26th;

On October 11, officers from the cybersecurity division, together with the Phu Tho Investigative Security Department, local prosecutors, and Ha Dong Ward Police (Hanoi), raided a meeting room inside an apartment complex in Ha Dong.

A Meta Whale marketing event was being held at the complex, with over one hundred in attendance.

The event was organized by Le Xuan Tham (36), Hoang Thi Thuy (42), and Nguyen Thi Huyen (47) – all Hanoi residents.

A Meta Whale criminal investigation was confirmed on October 29th, leading to arrest warrants issued against Meta Whale’s Vietnamese ringleaders on December 17th.

Vietnamese authorities went public with the Meta Whale criminal investigation on December 25th.

The case is still under active investigation, with authorities expanding their probe to uncover more suspects and victims.

Thus far around two thousand investors have been identified, with losses estimated to run into hundreds of thousands.

Meta Whale is an MLM crypto Ponzi run by wanted fugitive Vladimir “Lado” Okhotnikov.

Launched in mid 2025, Meta Whale marks the eighth reboot of Okhotnikov’s long-running Forsage Ponzi scheme.

Okhotnikov was indicted in the US in early 2023. The SEC has also filed parallel civil fraud charges.

Okhotnikov had been evading US authorities in Georgia. In March 2024 a Georgian Forsage criminal investigation saw Okhotnikov sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison.

By that stage Okhotnikov had fled to Dubai, where he remains today.

Meta Whale operates from the domain “meta-whale.com”. As of November 2025, SimilarWeb was tracking ~2100 monthly Meta Whale website visits.

Over the same period of time the majority of Meta Whale website traffic originated from Pakistan (58%) and India (42%).