Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security has arrested seven people accused of running HiAnime, once the world’s largest unauthorized anime streaming site, four months after it went dark in March. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment confirmed the arrests on July 2, 2026, tying the same group to more than 100 related piracy websites.
For years, a takedown against a site like this meant a short pause and a new domain name. HiAnime itself had already done that twice, first as Zoro.to, then as Aniwatch. This time the people running it are facing criminal charges rather than just losing a URL, and that distinction matters more than the shutdown did back in March.
TL;DR: Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security arrested seven people connected to HiAnime and a wider network of over 100 piracy sites on July 2, 2026. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment says the group earned close to $12.85 million in advertising revenue between 2020 and April 2026 while uploading more than 26,000 films without authorization. Four suspects are in custody and three are barred from leaving their place of residence while the case continues. US Homeland Security Investigations and the Department of Justice supported the multi-year investigation.
What ACE and Vietnamese authorities actually confirmed
The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment said the arrests followed action by Vietnam’s Economic Crimes Investigation Department, known as C03, and its Department of Cybersecurity and High-Tech Crime Prevention, known as A05. Both units operate under the Ministry of Public Security.
ACE credited the US Department of Homeland Security and the coalition’s own investigators for supplying information that let Vietnamese authorities identify the operators. The statement frames the case as intellectual property infringement tied to the copying and uploading of films online, not a vague policy sweep.
This is a coordinated law enforcement case with named government units on record, not an anonymous tip that led to a domain seizure.
The numbers behind HiAnime’s piracy network
Dexerto’s reporting, citing Vietnamese outlet Bao Ha Tinh, puts a specific scale on the operation. The group ran more than 100 websites, uploaded over 26,000 films without authorization, and generated approximately $12.85 million in advertising revenue between 2020 and April 2026.
Four of the seven suspects are currently in custody. The remaining three are barred from leaving their place of residence while the investigation continues, which suggests charges are still being finalized rather than closed.
The case also lands inside a broader trade context. Vietnam was named a Priority Foreign Country in the US Trade Representative’s 2026 Special 301 Report over IP enforcement gaps, and the government ran a nationwide crackdown on high traffic unauthorized platforms between May 7 and 30, 2026.
Why an arrest hits different than a shutdown
HiAnime’s shutdown in March was not its first. The site began as Zoro.to, resurfaced as Aniwatch after an earlier round of pressure, then rebranded again as HiAnime in 2024. Each time, user accounts and traffic carried over almost untouched.
A domain seizure only ever removed the storefront. The people running the operation stayed anonymous and simply reopened somewhere else within weeks, which is exactly why the site kept growing instead of shrinking each time it was hit.
Criminal charges against named individuals do not have that same reset button. Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security is not blocking a URL here, it is prosecuting the seven people who allegedly built and ran the business behind it, which is a different kind of pressure than anything HiAnime survived in its previous two identities.
What this actually means if you are still hunting for a replacement
Anyone still searching for a HiAnime style site should treat this as a signal, not a footnote. Sites using the HiAnime name or a close variant of it after July 2, 2026 have no connection to the people who were just arrested, and any domain resurrecting the brand now is more likely to be a clone built to catch displaced traffic than a genuine successor.
That risk is not hypothetical. Community threads tracking previous shutdowns this year, including AnimeKai’s collapse in May, consistently show mirror domains and rebrand clones carrying a noticeably higher rate of malicious redirects and ad network abuse than the original sites ever did.
2026 has already taken down HiAnime, AnimeKai, and a cluster of manga hosting sites through coordinated enforcement rather than isolated takedowns. Anyone deciding what to do next is better off checking a licensed catalog first, since the unofficial side of this ecosystem is shrinking in a way it has not before.
