Vladimir Okhotnikov’s financial advisor, Harold Klein, was charged with accessory to money laundering

Vladimir Okhotnikov, a self‑styled "genius" from Kazakhstan, has spent years outsmarting law enforcement across multiple countries.

An almost Hollywood star, Vladimir Okhotnikov played a role in Kevin Spacey’s film "The Holigards Saga: Portal of Power" under the name Lado Okhotnikov and even co-authored the screenplay, while the producer of this thriller was Elvira Gavrilova, who also produced Sean Penn’s film "Superpower" about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

But that celebrity "stardust" could not shield Mr. Okhotnikov from the US regulator over the Forsage crypto pyramid scheme he built: in 2022 the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged 11 individuals with organizing and promoting the fraudulent Forsage cryptocurrency pyramid scheme. The scheme drew in nearly $340 million from retail investors around the world.

Charges were brought against Vladimir Okhotnikov himself as well as his accomplices. The pyramid ran on the Ethereum, Tron and Binance blockchains. Okhotnikov then relocated to Tbilisi, where he began promoting a new pyramid scheme, Meta Force, which the Central Bank of Russia blacklisted on 5 August 2022.

Okhotnikov then traded Tbilisi for Dubai (UAE).

But in 2024 the Tbilisi City Court convicted the fraudster Okhotnikov in absentia and sentenced him to 10 years in prison on money-laundering charges.

And now the United States very much wants to see him too.

A Charles Ponzi-style con

Vladimir Okhotnikov, a citizen of Russia, has already gone down in recent history as the creator of the Forsage cryptocurrency pyramid scheme.

Together with Elena Oblamskaya (also known as Lola Ferrari), Mikhail Sergeev (also known as Mike Mooney, also known as Gleb Million) and Sergey Maslakov, Mr. Okhotnikov organized a massive scam in which investors lost nearly $340 million.

Vladimir Okhotnikov in person

Forsage was marketed as a decentralized finance platform, but in reality it turned out to be a classic Ponzi scheme.

As Ivan Arvelo, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), noted, the defendants used trendy technology and opaque language to lure money out of people, while relying on a classic Ponzi scheme.

The scheme is named after the Italian emigrant Charles Ponzi, who back in 1920 organized a scam in the US involving international postal reply coupons. The resourceful Ponzi convinced investors he could profit from currency exchange-rate differences: buying coupons cheaply in one country and exchanging them for stamps in another, where they were worth more. In reality, the coupons could not be converted into cash, only into stamps, which could not be sold wholesale.

The US Department of Justice ultimately charged Vladimir Okhotnikov with conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Okhotnikov faces up to 20 years in prison.

The first to sound the alarm were regulators in the Philippines and the state of Montana in the US, who issued cease-and-desist orders. But the Forsage team ignored the bans and continued its aggressive marketing. On 1 August 2022 the SEC filed a civil suit against Okhotnikov and ten other founders and promoters, officially calling Forsage "a textbook example of a pyramid and Ponzi scheme."

In February 2023 the US Department of Justice struck again: a court in Oregon brought criminal charges against four Forsage founders.

This is one of the first high-profile criminal cases against a DeFi Ponzi scheme in the US.

A motley crew

So the group included the four founders of Forsage, who lived in Russia, Georgia, Indonesia and Ukraine, as well as three promoters from the US.

These people were hired by the company’s founders to support Forsage. They also brought in several members of the so-called Crypto Crusaders, a promotional group for the scheme that operated in 5 different US states.

According to the SEC complaint, in January 2020 Vladimir Okhotnikov, Lola Ferrari, Mikhail Sergeev and Sergey Maslakov launched Forsage.io, a website that allowed investors to enter into transactions using smart contracts.

Vladimir Okhotnikov

Despite the fact that in September 2020 the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission and in March 2021 the Montana Commissioner of Securities and Insurance took action against Forsage for fraud, the defendants continued to promote their scheme.

In addition to charging the four founders, the complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, also accuses the following of violating the law: Cherry Beth Bowen of Pelahatchie, Mississippi; Ronald R. Deering of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Samuel D. Ellis of Louisville, Kentucky; Mark F. Hamlin of Henrico, Virginia; as well as Carlos L. Martinez of Chicago, Illinois; Alicia R. Sheppard of Dunedin, Florida; and Sarah L. Theisen of Hartford, Wisconsin.

US prosecutors also refuted the organizers’ claims that Forsage had made 50 people millionaires.

Ferrari’s special role

The first to be extradited to the US, from Thailand, was Elena Oblamskaaya.

The 43-year-old Ukrainian citizen, known as Lola Ferrari, was extradited in May of this year, 2026.

US authorities accuse her of being one of the founders of the Forsage cryptocurrency IT platform.

Thailand’s Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau: preparing for extradition

The IT platform presented itself as a decentralized matrix project based on the principles of network marketing and the use of smart contracts (self-executing agreements on the blockchain).

To prospective investors, Forsage was pitched as a legitimate, low-risk, high-yield investment opportunity.

However, investigators believe the project was a classic financial pyramid scheme.

How the IT project worked: once a user purchased a "slot," the smart contract automatically redistributed the incoming funds in favor of earlier participants.

And part of the funds raised from investors was transferred to crypto wallets controlled by Okhotnikov and his associates.

Elena Oblamskaya, also known as Lola Ferrari

Investigators found that Forsage’s smart contracts were programmed to generate income for a limited circle of people, namely the organizers of the IT project. One of the crypto wallets controlled by the organizers received more than 5,400 ETH, equivalent to several million dollars.

Elena Oblamskaya held a special place in this scheme: it was Oblamskaya who actively promoted Forsage online as a fully legitimate and promising investment IT platform.

Thailand’s Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau arrested Oblamskaya in February 2026 at a condominium in the Chalong area of Phuket island. This was reported by Thai media.

During searches of Oblamskaya’s bungalow, mobile phones, computer equipment, a laptop and numerous documents were seized.

Searches at Elena Oblamskaya’s condominium

Before that, Elena Oblamskaya had been based in Bali.

In mid-May of this year, 2026, appeared before a US federal court. Oblamskaya pleaded not guilty.

The court ruled to hold Oblamskaya in custody pending a jury trial, which is scheduled for 14 July 2026.

It should be noted that this same Lola Ferrari became the first of the four defendants in the case to appear before a US federal court. Vladimir Okhotnikov, Mikhail Sergeev and Sergey Maslakov, meanwhile, remain at large.

Master of tea ceremonies

According to US authorities, the main organizer of the scheme was Vladimir Okhotnikov.

He was born on 27 March 1978 in Kokchetav, Kazakh SSR. His mother worked in a shop, and his father was a Master of Sports in Greco-Roman wrestling. Okhotnikov spent his childhood in the city of Naberezhnye Chelny. Under his father’s guidance he took up the sport and became a Tatarstan champion in Greco-Roman wrestling.

In 1994 he moved to Moscow with his parents.

Okhotnikov is a graduate of the All-Russian Institute for Retraining and Advanced Training of Film Industry Workers (VIPKR, a branch of VGIK, the Russian State University of Cinematography), where he studied directing.

He began his career as a tea ceremony master and a distributor for the company Tiens.

Vladimir Okhotnikov

But he also tried his hand at various other companies: 4Life, Talk Fusion, Vie Science, Galaxy Mate.

From 2004 to 2009 he worked as a tea master at the Tea Culture Club in the Hermitage Garden in Moscow.

But he soon entered the cryptocurrency market, running, managing and controlling the Forsage project.

For the past several years Okhotnikov had lived in Georgia, but in 2023 he moved to the United Arab Emirates.

In 2024 the Tbilisi City Court convicted him in absentia and sentenced him to 10 years in prison on money-laundering charges.

"Whitewashing" with elephants and snow leopards

Today Mr. Okhotnikov, realizing that he may very soon find himself in a burning ring, is doing everything he can to polish up (understandably, not for nothing) his murky biography…

So what does the media write about him?

"He is an entrepreneur and traveler whose life is bound up with expeditions and learning languages... He is developing business projects, but devotes a significant amount of time to studying cultures, healthy living and nature conservation…"

Vladimir Okhotnikov

He travels a great deal: he has been to Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Nepal and Tibet. In Sri Lanka he helped fishermen mend their nets, in Nepal he spent several weeks in a monastery, and in Indonesia he volunteered at an English-language school.

Okhotnikov speaks English, Turkish, Tibetan and Farsi.

He worked with a foundation for restoring tropical forests in Brazil. In Thailand he supported an elephant rehabilitation center. In the Himalayas he took part in an expedition to study the range of the snow leopard.

Tea is a particular passion of his: he studied gongfu cha in China and chanoyu in Japan.

Quite the wholesome portrait…

Rebranding and a smokescreen?

But Okhotnikov continues to pursue his favorite line of work as well.

Another of Okhotnikov’s scandal-plagued companies, Meta Force, underwent a rebrand in September 2024, changing its name to Holiverse.

And today Mr. Okhotnikov is busy rolling out innovative medical solutions, for which he founded the company Holiverse, https://holiverse.ai/

Holiverse is presented as a high-tech metaverse focused on health, longevity and the integration of biodata.

Vladimir Okhotnikov founded the company Holiverse

At the same time, he has claimed that he left the Forsage project long ago and has completely ended his cooperation with his partners.

The company has launched its own line of natural cosmetics, Holisthetic, with the first batch sold on a marketplace within the virtual world of Holiverse. It has also taken up DNA research aimed at creating personalized digital avatars.

At the same time, Okhotnikov has begun appearing at high-society parties surrounded by producers and actors.

Today he takes part in filming projects and gives interviews.

Critics note that Holiverse creates an ideological smokescreen around the people who took part in his murky past projects.

Meanwhile, Europol has carried out an operation to shut down an international network that laundered more than $700 million using cryptocurrency, fake exchanges and call centers.

And people still recall the brutal murder in the UAE of crypto figure Roman Novak and his wife Anna: as is known, Novak was hiding from investors.

Anna and Roman Novak

And Holiverse has come under scrutiny because its creator, the maestro Okhotnikov, featured in a similarly high-profile case.

It is well known that the UAE today promotes itself as a crypto-friendly zone. But Dubai is called a "haven for crypto fraudsters": the city hosts offices and partner structures linked, among others, to Holiverse.

Vladimir Okhotnikov himself has indeed stepped into the media spotlight, where he is better known as Lado Okhotnikov. He mixes actively with artists and takes part in various projects.

But in SEC documents his name appears under "founders of the Ponzi platform," and behind his back he is simply called a "crypto crook."

And while Elena Oblamskaya, also known as Lola Ferrari, answers for all the crypto fraudsters, she will, in a few days’ time, on 14 July, face a jury trial in the US.

Oblamskaya faces up to 20 years in prison, 3 years of probation, and a fine of $250,000.

When will it be Lado Okhotnikov’s turn?

Yuliya Abshteyn

Автор

Автор: Иван Рокотов