
BREAKING: Vietnamese police have arrested the suspected operators of HiAnime, the world's largest anime piracy site, following a multi-year investigation supported by US Homeland Security Investigations, the DOJ, and anti-piracy coalition ACE. Four suspects are in custody with three more under travel restrictions. The group allegedly ran over 100 piracy sites since 2020, uploaded more than 26,000 films, and generated roughly $12.85 million in advertising revenue. HiAnime was not a hobbyist operation. It was a scaled commercial business built on stolen content, monetized through mainstream ad networks, and run across more than a hundred domains to survive takedowns. The cross-border coordination is what made this possible. Vietnamese law enforcement, US federal agencies, and a private industry coalition working the same case simultaneously is a model that has repeatedly failed against piracy for two decades. This time it worked.
