Russian Crypto Guru S Hollywood Gambit

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The stage was set for a night of glamour and redemption. On a mild August evening, as Hollywood stars paraded down the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival, Kevin Spacey was across the lagoon at the legendary Hotel Cipriani.
He arrived in the courtyard for a private party to showcase scenes from his latest film to a handpicked audience of about 40. Dressed in a red velvet blazer, Spacey posed for photos alongside his producer, a woman in a shimmering silver gown, before settling in to watch the trailer for “Holiguards Saga - The Portal of Force.”
For the Oscar-winning actor, the stakes were high: momentum for a potential comeback after sexual misconduct allegations derailed his career, leaving him teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
For the film’s creator, Vladimir Okhotnikov, an accused Russian cryptocurrency fraudster, the stakes were even higher: an entrée to Hollywood and a bold new stunt to draw in investors.
Okhotnikov, 47, who goes by Lado, is the alleged mastermind of a series of cryptocurrency scams, including one called Holiverse, which shares its name with his evolving cinematic universe.
He co-wrote “The Portal of Force” based on a semi-autobiographical comic book and in February told a crowd of supporters in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, that the Spacey adaptation would “bring a global audience, driving our successful metaverse, attracting countless users to our games, tokens and initiatives.”
Over the past five years, Okhotnikov’s alleged scams have stretched across four continents, received around US$1 billion (RM4.11 billion) from millions of unsuspecting investors and made him a wanted man.
US prosecutors have accused him of running Forsage, an international Ponzi and pyramid scheme that used a rigged cryptocurrency investment platform to steal at least US$340 million from investors between 2020 and 2022.
Last year, a court in Tbilisi, Georgia, convicted him of laundering US$1.1 million in proceeds from Forsage.
As those charges loomed, Okhotnikov fled to Dubai, where he has repeatedly rebooted the scheme while diversifying an ever-expanding portfolio of startups - from online gaming to anti-ageing supplements based on unproven DNA science.
In Venice, his only appearance with Spacey was on-screen: In “The Portal of Force,” he plays Dao, the wise man guiding the heroes.
Spacey did not respond to requests for comment by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, but his presence in the film lends the franchise an aura of credibility.
Celebrity is just one part of Okhotnikov’s business model. The rise of blockchain technology - and the speed and anonymity of cryptocurrency transactions - has enabled him to lure investors with far-fetched promises of trustworthy investment opportunities.
His story highlights how crypto has turbocharged age-old financial schemes and allowed accused criminals to outrun authorities trying to catch and prosecute them.
Journalists in the US, Germany, Portugal, Ukraine and Georgia uncovered new details of Okhotnikov’s business dealings as part of The Coin Laundry, an investigation by ICIJ in collaboration with 37 media partners.
The Coin Laundry exposes how the crypto industry has profited from illicit financial flows while leaving most of those harmed in the process without recourse.
Forsage relied on smart contracts, which are self-executing agreements written in code and stored on digital ledgers known as blockchains.
These computer programs are ubiquitous on peer-to-peer cryptocurrency trading platforms known as decentralised exchanges, which operate outside the constraints and protections of traditional finance.
Okhotnikov has allegedly used them to dupe investors. Instead of making people millionaires, the contracts underpinning his platform were manipulated to siphon their money away, prosecutors said.
His latest startup, Meta Whale, has already attracted 40,000 users a month since launching in May, according to its website. Experts told ICIJ that, like his previous platforms, it resembles a financial pyramid.
“(Smart contracts) allow for this very deceptive messaging, because the scheme is, in principle, completely transparent,” said Ari Juels, a Cornell Tech computer science professor whose team of researchers investigated Forsage in 2021.
“So people hear about friends, acquaintances striking it rich with cryptocurrency, and this would seem to afford another opportunity to do so,” Juels said. “It’s just not immediately apparent how tilted the playing field is here.”
Despite facing a slew of criminal and civil charges, Okhotnikov has cultivated a sleek online persona as a self-described “technology guru, businessperson and uncompromising blockchain evangelist,” promising to free investors from the shackles of government oversight.
Now, unable to travel because of an outstanding arrest warrant, he relies on a 36-year-old Ukrainian marketing specialist named Elvira Gavrilova to promote his brands overseas.
Records reviewed by ICIJ show that, in the past two years, Gavrilova’s public relations firm, Elledgy Media, has organised star-studded events in the US, France, Italy, India and the UAE to promote Okhotnikov’s ventures.
In January, Gavrilova told a legal adviser in confidential messages reviewed by ICIJ that more than US$4 million had “passed through” the Portugal-based firm since she met Okhotnikov.
Earlier this year, Portuguese authorities began investigating Elledgy over suspected money laundering, ICIJ’s media partner Expresso found. Reporters could not determine the current status of the probe.
Okhotnikov did not respond to ICIJ’s repeated requests for comment. Gavrilova, whose last name is now Paterson, told ICIJ she would comment on the reporters’ findings but did not respond further.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Elvira Paterson/Gavrilova (@elviragavrilova_official)
Elledgy also co-produced “The Portal of Force” and organised the lavish dinner at the Hotel Cipriani, where Gavrilova spared no expense - and rarely left Spacey’s side.
After guests were served one of the chef’s signature dishes, a beef tomato “steak” with saffron risotto, and Bellini cocktails, Gavrilova took the microphone. She told the crowd it was her “greatest honour” to work with the actor.
“His talent is not just about acting,” she said. “It is a truth in self. Truth that makes us cry, makes us believe. He gave this story its breath. He made it alive.”
‘Fast and furious’
Okhotnikov was born in Soviet-ruled Kazakhstan and grew up poor in Russia, according to his website. His father, a wrestling coach, trained him to wrestle, which Okhotnikov credits as the source of his resilience.
“When you overcome real difficulty, it hardens and inspires you,” he said in an interview with a Russian-language website earlier this year.
In the early 2000s, after studying filmmaking in Moscow and failing to break into the film industry, Okhotnikov entered the murky world of multi-level marketing. Also known as network marketing, this controversial and sometimes illegal business model requires salespeople to recruit others to earn commissions.
Since then, Okhotnikov has launched or participated in at least 16 multi-level marketing schemes, ICIJ found. For a self-described libertarian who said he moved to Georgia to avoid paying Russian taxes, crypto innovations promised a way to aim even higher - and recruit more investors than ever before.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Meta Force (@metaforcespace)
The launch of the Ethereum blockchain in 2015 enabled developers to build and deploy smart contracts and other applications without oversight from governments, banks or other third parties.
The technology rapidly transformed the network marketing industry. Marketers could use smart contracts to create what analysts call “decentralised investment schemes” that automate recruitment and payment processes.
Unlike multi-level marketing schemes, which sell real products, decentralised investment schemes have pyramid-like structures that generate returns for investors when they maintain a steady flow of recruits. Some are also Ponzi schemes, a type of fraud where early investors are paid with money from newer investors.
As decentralised investment schemes began to spread, Okhotnikov “could not resist participating,” he said in an interview with a now-defunct website.
He said he soon became frustrated with the limitations of the existing programmes and in 2019 decided to launch his own, partnering with three fellow Russians, including a previous collaborator.
He named the new platform Forsage, a Georgian word meaning “fast and furious,” and branded it with a wildcat.
When Forsage launched in early 2020, Okhotnikov claimed it would be fully transparent, “zero risk” and provide “unlimited” earning opportunities for investors.
“There are no admins, no bosses who can use their power to change something in their favour,” he said in a YouTube video. “You can become a millionaire.”
The Forsage founders relied on promoters in the US, Nigeria, the Philippines and other countries to market the investment scheme through in-person workshops, webinars and promotional videos posted on Facebook, YouTube, Telegram and other social media platforms.
Its website directed people to user-friendly crypto tools to set up wallets, buy cryptocurrencies and begin trading. Users then had to pay at least 0.05 ether, a cryptocurrency worth between roughly US$5 and US$38 at the time, to join the Forsage smart contract on Ethereum, where they were assigned a “slot” in the programme.
Each Forsage user received a referral code, which would link them to anyone they recruited, organising users into pyramids with the earliest at the top. Users had to recruit at least three people to start generating income.
Within a few months, it had become the most transacted smart contract on Ethereum with more than 1 million users and soon launched on other blockchains.
Samuel Ellis, a real estate broker from Louisville, Kentucky, joined Forsage after responding to an online ad seeking people to produce training videos.
Ellis, who had 30 years of network marketing experience, said the programme “excited” him because “it was like buying into real estate.”
“There was a contract and you could resell the contract over and over again, just like a house, to produce income,” he told ICIJ.
At one point, Ellis said, he worked with a team producing YouTube videos to attract new users. He communicated with Forsage organisers through messaging apps and by email, but never met Okhotnikov, he said. Ellis knew that the investment scheme could be risky, he said, but didn’t think it was a scam.
Authorities disagreed.
The Philippines Securities and Exchange Commission was the first to sound the alarm about Forsage in a June 2020 public warning.
“Forsage took advantage of the fact that during the pandemic everyone was looking for extra income since some had no jobs,” Filbert Flores, a senior officer at the commission, told ICIJ media partner Tech in Asia. “It was really exploitative.”
Nearly a year later, in April 2021, Montana’s commissioner of securities and insurance issued a cease-and-desist order labelling Forsage a pyramid scheme.
The following month, Juels, the Cornell Tech professor, released a forensic report with a group of researchers detailing how Forsage had used smart contracts to funnel funds to a handful of top users.
While a few high-level participants had profited “handsomely” and the contract owner raked in US$1.2 million, the report said, the vast majority of Forsage users - over 88 percent - lost money.
“The people who launched the scheme, developed it and advertised it were clearly responsible,” Juels told ICIJ. “It’s just hard to hold people accountable.”
Cars to crypto
Okhotnikov ran Forsage from an apartment in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, where he spent most of the day at his computer making YouTube videos, his former business associate Petr Pak later told a Georgian court.
The pair co-owned Auto Assistance and Car Service, a company with a minibus that offered transportation to tourists. Okhotnikov was also a director at one of Pak’s car dealerships, which imported used cars from the US to be fixed up and resold in Turkey, Russia and Dubai.
After Forsage launched in 2020, Pak said he helped Okhotnikov convert cryptocurrency into cash and deposited it in multiple accounts with two Georgian banks.
A Ukrainian driver from the garage also deposited money on Okhotnikov’s behalf, according to Georgian court records obtained exclusively by ICIJ’s media partner Studio Monitor.
Then in August 2022, the US Securities and Exchange Commission charged Okhotnikov and his three Forsage co-founders with fraud, along with Ellis and a group of US-based promoters. The SEC alleged that Ellis had received at least US$72,405. He settled the charges and paid a fine without admitting wrongdoing.
For his part, Okhotnikov quickly denied the allegations and shifted the blame to the other founders, accusing them of turning Forsage into a pyramid scheme. But authorities in Georgia were coming for him too.
The SEC action had tipped off the Georgian banks, and their employees were asking questions about the source of the deposited funds - more than US$1.1 million over several years. Okhotnikov said the money came from his “shops,” court records show. His US lawyers are trying to have the SEC case thrown out.
Prosecutors summoned him for questioning. “Okhotnikov said that he was afraid,” according to court records. He then gave a suitcase with computers, a phone and memory cards to a third collaborator, described in the records as an apartment designer, who took them across the border to Turkey.
After his interrogation, Okhotnikov fled. “He cited filming a commercial (in) Turkey as the reason for his move, but flew to Dubai two days later,” the lead investigator with the prosecutor’s office said in a witness statement. Okhotnikov never returned.
The UAE city has become a haven for fugitives and crypto fraudsters, including Ruja Ignatova, the now-missing founder of OneCoin, a crypto-related Ponzi scheme in which investors lost more than US$4 billion.
“Dubai is certainly the worldwide centre for pyramid schemes, scams, (multi-level marketing), crypto money laundering,” said Jonathan Levy, a lawyer who has helped OneCoin victims try to recover stolen funds. “It’s a much bigger problem, a security issue, also because many sanctioned organisations are now using crypto… All that is going through Dubai.”
In early 2023, a federal grand jury in Oregon concluded that Forsage was a “textbook” pyramid and Ponzi scheme, and charged Okhotnikov and his three Russian partners with conspiracy to commit wire fraud - a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The case is pending.
“Although these are difficult times… because officials want cryptocurrency blood… our attention must be not on this negative,” Okhotnikov said in a YouTube video days after the indictment landed. “Only businesses with real value will survive, and we will survive.”
In March 2024, a Georgian court sentenced Okhotnikov in absentia to 10 years in prison for laundering proceeds from Forsage through a series of deposits into at least 53 bank accounts belonging to him and his associates.
The Georgian government seized his assets, including a Lexus SUV; two Tbilisi apartments, one with a 307-square-foot swimming pool; and five parking spaces - worth about US$1 million in total, according to court records. Prosecutors issued an international warrant for his arrest, a spokesperson for the Prosecutor’s Office told Studio Monitor.
Despite his mounting legal troubles, Okhotnikov kept busy promoting another platform, Meta Force, from Dubai. In only a few months, it had surpassed Forsage, raking in US$574 million in investments in its first year, according to blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs. Meta Force quickly came under scrutiny when the Central Bank of Russia warned that it resembled a “financial pyramid.” Chinese regulators later labelled it a “fraud.”
Okhotnikov was unfazed. Behind the scenes, he had hired Gavrilova.
‘A magical year’
In her Instagram bio, Gavrilova describes herself as a film producer and founder of a company that sells luxury bunkers to the ultrarich.
She began her career in public relations about a decade ago when she joined Amillidius, a Kyiv, Ukraine-based advertising and reputation management firm co-owned by her husband at the time, Andrey Gerasimov.
Gerasimov and Gavrilova dissolved Amillidius in 2022 after a flurry of negative media reports accusing the company of extorting its clients - allegations they deny.
In the meantime, they moved to Portugal and changed their last names to Paterson, according to records from Portugal’s corporate registry obtained by Expresso. The couple divorced, and in 2023 Gavrilova, who uses both her names for business, set up her marketing company, Elledgy.
Elvira GavrilovaIt’s not clear when Gavrilova met Okhotnikov, but within a year of Elledgy’s launch, Gavrilova’s company began promoting his brands.
The first event, in July 2024, was an extravagant alfresco dinner party in the coastal French town of Saint-Tropez for Meta Force -which would shutter only months later. Okhotnikov, sporting a black suit jacket with no tie, streamed in from a big screen to greet the celebrity guests.
Large banners brandished the Meta Force logo while an on-screen presentation boasted that the company had US$2 billion of revenue.
In Dubai, preparations for “The Portal of Force” were already underway. The same month as the Meta Force dinner, Okhotnikov announced he was writing a script for the film based on a semi-autobiographical graphic novel about a hero whose “mission is not simply to defeat enemies but to maintain the balance of the universe.”
The film was part of Okhotnikov’s plan to develop Meta Force’s “cinematic universe,” now Holiverse, a nod to the multibillion-dollar Marvel franchise, bringing together comic books, video games and blockbuster films, he said on his blog. It’s slated as the first instalment of the Holiguards saga about two ancient warrior forces waging a secret war.
Okhotnikov shut down Meta Force in September 2024, claiming it had been attacked “on several fronts” by undisclosed “enemies.” Over the next five months, Elledgy paid at least US$1.2 million to produce “The Portal of Force,” according to company bank records reviewed by ICIJ.
Elledgy hired a local production crew in Mexico; American cinematographers; and stunt performers from France, the UK and the US who had previously worked on “Game of Thrones” and “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
Gavrilova and Spacey, who would direct and star in the film alongside Okhotnikov, Eric Roberts, Dolph Lundgren and Tyrese Gibson, flew to Durango, Mexico, in November 2024 to shoot in the desert at Rancho La Joya, a sprawling property of more than 405ha, once owned by Hollywood icon John Wayne.
The ranch’s owner, Armando Lozoya, told ICIJ it was one of the biggest productions he ever had on his property, with over 300 people working on it daily for an entire month. Lozoya, whose family has rented the site to filmmakers for three generations, said he was blown away by the scale.
“For Holiguards, they hired a lot of people. It was a world of people,” Lozoya said. He recalled that the production team brought in a crane from a different state, even though an older model was available for rent in Durango. “This seemed to be a company that had so much money, an amount of money that could be inconceivable to you and me,” he added.
Once filming in Mexico wrapped, Gavrilova, Spacey and some of the actors flew to Dubai to shoot the final scenes with Okhotnikov, who had just embarked on his most ambitious project yet.
In October, he launched Holiverse, a sprawling company promising to combine biotechnology, virtual environments and decentralised finance, all heavily marketed with AI-generated videos and influencers.
Gavrilova organised a gala at a luxury resort on Palm Jumeirah, an archipelago of artificial islands in the Persian Gulf, to celebrate and promote the film, which was part of the new brand. This time, Okhotnikov, dressed in a black tuxedo over a black satin turtleneck, greeted his guests in person.
As fireworks lit up the sky, he hugged Gavrilova and exchanged smiles with Keanu Reeves, who was there to play bass with his band, according to videos posted on YouTube and other social media platforms.
Bollywood star Disha Patani, set to make her international debut in “The Portal of Force,” posed for photographers. ICIJ was unable to reach Patani. None of the actors responded to requests for comment.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Ладо Охотников (@ladookhotnikov)
Later in the evening, after Okhotnikov showed the guests a trailer for the film, Spacey got onstage with the other actors and addressed the crowd. “We’re incredibly pleased to be here. We thank Elvira for all the work she has done,” he said. Okhotnikov stood behind him, beaming.
On Instagram a few weeks later, Gavrilova shared a 2024 highlights reel that included snapshots from the gala, the Mexico shoot and the Meta Force event in southern France. “It was a magical year,” the caption read.
To the moon
In January, Gavrilova sought legal advice. She was concerned that working for Okhotnikov might increase scrutiny of Elledgy, she told a lawyer in voice and text messages reviewed by ICIJ. Gavrilova asked whether she should raise Elledgy’s authorised capital “so that everything looks plausible.”
“I didn’t have such volumes before,” Gavrilova said. “I say, up to US$4 million has passed through the company in the last few months since I met him. The rest was crypto.”
The lawyer did not respond. Meanwhile, a compliance officer at a Portuguese bank had noticed suspicious activity in Gavrilova’s account. The officer recommended alerting authorities that a cash deposit Gavrilova made of about US$312,000 was a sign of possible money laundering, according to an internal report viewed by ICIJ and Expresso.
She said that the money was a “gift” from her parents, who had already sent her about US$150,000 to buy a property.
At Elledgy, everything appeared to be business as usual. Early this year, Gavrilova orchestrated another elaborate PR stunt for Okhotnikov’s company Holiverse - this time at an event organised by two space industry companies at the Nasa center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by ELLEDGY MEDIA GROUP (@elledgymedia)
The event was meant to be a symbolic lunar mission: the companies sending a digital copy of the US Constitution to the moon’s orbit. Elledgy officially sponsored the event, but at the last minute, Gavrilova placed Holiverse banners at an entry to the venue so the logo would be photographed with guests.
In the following days, a Russian PR company flooded the internet with more than 1,100 articles repeatedly crediting Holiverse as the sponsor of the event. A company representative told ICIJ the campaign was run by its previous owner and that current management is investigating the matter following ICIJ’s inquiry.
Gavrilova later tried to commission Spacebit, one of the companies behind the Florida event, to send a copy of the film to the moon. Spacebit founder Pavlo Tanasyuk told ICIJ that his company asked her to disclose her client’s identity when she proposed to pay in cryptocurrency.
She described her client in vague terms as a “good guy” from Kazakhstan who “got in trouble with bad people,” according to Tanasyuk. He recalled her saying: “Yes, he has an indictment but lawyers are working on this. He’s innocent.”
The deal fell through, Tanasyuk said, when Gavrilova finally disclosed the client’s name and sent back an edited copy of their agreement that said: “The source of money is Lado Okhotnikov.”
As part of the due diligence process, Tanasyuk said he obtained information identifying the alleged address of one of Okhotnikov’s crypto wallets. An ICIJ analysis of its transactions found that US$29 million worth of cryptocurrency passed through the wallet between September 2024 and September 2025.
The space mission never happened, but Gavrilova had a new target to help promote Okhotnikov’s brand: Maye Musk, the mother of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
Elledgy’s bank records reveal that the company paid the 77-year-old model about US$350,000 over several instalments. In February, Musk attended a private Elledgy event in the French Alps, where she was photographed in front of a black backdrop with a Holiguards logo. She later appeared on the cover of a new magazine called Holiguard.
The first issue was released at Musk’s birthday party in Mumbai, India, organised by Gavrilova, according to the bank records and social media posts of guests who attended.
On the cover of the magazine, posted on Instagram by one of the guests, Musk posed in the snow wearing a bedazzled cream gown. Musk did not respond to ICIJ’s requests for comment.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Ладо Охотников (@ladookhotnikov)
Shortly after the Meta Force party in July 2024, Elledgy began receiving payments from more than a dozen companies based in Germany, the UK, Belgium and Spain. By May, these payments totalled about US$4 million, bank records reviewed by ICIJ show.
The entities include a courier service in Dortmund, Germany, that was recently deregistered because of a lack of assets after wiring more than US$350,000 to Elledgy in January and March.
Some of the others - officially registered as limousine services, couriers or construction firms - have no websites, show dated or no financial statements in the countries’ corporate registries, and often have the same address, suggesting they could be shell companies.
“They probably are red flags,” Graham Barrow, a former banker and financial crime expert, told ICIJ. “Small companies are really commonly used for money laundering,” he added. “It’s a great way of trying to go under the radar. And the more jurisdictions you have involved, the harder it is to do a proper investigation.”
ICIJ reporters in Berlin, Dortmund and Madrid visited the official addresses of six companies, including one registered as a clothing trading firm and others listed as parcel delivery services.
Instead of those businesses, the reporters found mailboxes inside co-working spaces and no staff or signs of commercial activity. The reporters also called or emailed the companies with available contact information but were unable to reach any representatives.
The Meta Whale ‘masterpiece’
While Gavrilova was enlisting celebrities to promote Okhotnikov’s ventures as reputable startups, the crypto entrepreneur was preparing to unveil yet another decentralised investment scheme.
Shortly after the Dubai gala in December, he announced on social media that Holiverse, too, had fallen victim to “sabotage” and “betrayal.” Unnamed “scammers” had stolen investors’ funds from the smart contracts, he said in online videos.
By February, Okhotnikov had a new “masterpiece” ready to go: an investment platform called Meta Whale.
Like Forsage and Meta Force, Meta Whale recruits users through referrals and is heavily marketed on social media. Users buy WhaleBit tokens, which go by the symbol CES, to join and unlock new levels, and earn income from sign-ups, according to the company’s educational materials.
Meta Whale promoters target new users in communities in India, Vietnam and other countries.
Seaun Afolabi, a 32-year-old crypto trader who lives in Lagos, Nigeria, tried Meta Whale in April after watching a promoter’s presentation live on X, formerly Twitter.
At first he loved the idea, he told ICIJ in a recent interview. Afolabi said financial trading is his passion, but he is cautious about investment schemes advertised online after losing US$10,000 to a fraudulent platform a few years ago.
He decided to run a test. Afolabi said he paid US$12 to create a Meta Whale account and “waited a bit,” since the promoter on X promised investors could make money without inviting others.
After a couple of days, Afolabi said he hadn’t generated any income, so he asked seven friends to register and told them to wait as well. Then, a few days later, Afolabi was checking his recent investments on the computer in his living room when he noticed that his Meta Whale account had received US$9. The discovery dismayed him, he said, because he knew the money came from his referrals: his friends.
Meta Whale was promoted on X as “something that’s going to change a lot of people’s life,” he said. “But I was disappointed just to know that without referrals you ain’t going to make anything.”
Afolabi immediately called his friends and told them to stop using the platform. Then he recorded a video for his YouTube channel to warn others that Meta Whale was not what it seemed.
“If you actually want to help people by helping them to come out of poverty, you give them a platform where a normal person can come in, invest and make money, not just have to refer someone before they can make something,” he said.
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ICIJ asked several experts in blockchain analytics and forensic accounting to review the smart contracts underpinning Meta Whale. They all found that the contracts were different from those used in Forsage but the structure of the schemes is almost identical.
When US prosecutors investigated Forsage, they identified it as a Ponzi and pyramid scheme because it had no apparent source of revenue other than investors’ funds and the primary way to make money was by recruiting others.
Meta Whale is similar and could be even riskier for investors because the top 10 holders of its CES tokens appear to own more than 90 percent of the entire supply, according to Stacey Ferris, a certified fraud examiner and assistant professor of accounting at Virginia Tech. Just two wallets hold more than 80 percent of the tokens, she found.
Despite Okhotnikov publicly claiming on social media that the decentralised platform ensures “no middlemen, just direct, transparent trading using blockchain tech,” the analysis of the smart contracts uncovered evidence of centralised control.
Meta Whale uses proxy contracts, a type of intermediary contract that delegates to an underlying “implementation” contract, which can be changed at any time to redirect funds, according to Ferris.
“It’s basically set up for a rug pull,” she said.
Ferris explained that the underlying smart contract could be switched to one that drains funds from the platform, then reverted back without tracking the changes made to the code.
“Blockchain scanners will display the current smart contract code but do not typically provide a history of changes made to that code,” she said. “It would be difficult to trace.”
A “rug pull” occurs when the owners of a crypto scheme sell most or all of their tokens after they reach a certain price, Ferris said. If the owners control the majority of the tokens, as is the case with CES, the price will crash, destroying the value of the tokens held by retail investors. “It would appear as if a third party has attacked the network, not the project owner,” she said.
Last month, Slovenia’s financial watchdog warned that Forsage, Meta Force, Holiverse and Meta Whale were the same entity “linked to an international fraud” operating under different names.
‘An honest story’
After trumpeting the success of the “Portal of Force” trailer screening in Venice, Okhotnikov and Gavrilova’s social media channels went quiet.
Then, in mid-September, Gavrilova revealed that the film would premiere on Dec 20 at another gala dinner, this time in Lisbon, Portugal. Not only would Spacey and the other stars attend, she said, but the next instalment of the franchise would be filmed in the country.
“Holiguards is an honest story, of which we are very proud, especially because it’s being realized by a Portuguese company,” Gavrilova said in sponsored articles published online, using the name Elvira Paterson. The articles didn’t mention Okhotnikov.
Meanwhile, he was busy promoting Meta Whale. On Sept 28, the company announced that the next day its token, Whalebit, would be listed on MEXC, a centralised exchange blacklisted by French, Dutch and German regulators for operating without authorisation. Within a few hours, the value of the token rose to about US$7, then lost nearly half its value by the end of its first day of trading, according to analytics firm CoinGecko.
The launch fell short of the company’s aspirations, laid out only a few days earlier at a special event in Dubai. Okhotnikov had gathered 10 of Meta Whale’s top promoters - dubbed “the Warriors of Light” - from Italy, Vietnam and other countries for a meeting in the conference room of a luxury hotel.
Videos posted by some of the promoters show Okhotnikov giving a presentation with Meta Whale’s goals on-screen behind him: Whalebit valued at US$20, and 50 million users. The group then attended a Meta Whale-themed banquet featuring walking robots, a DJ blasting house music and dancers wearing black feathered headdresses.
“When you’re earning millions, potentially through criminal activity, you definitely want to be out there and enjoying it,” said Barrow, the financial crime expert. “Where’s the fun in lying low?” - Mkini
Contributing reporters: Micael Pereira (Expresso), Nino Zuriashvili (Studio Monitor), Petra Blum (WDR), Catharina Felke (NDR), Yaroslava Nikitiuk (Slidstvo.Info), Elyssa Lopez (Tech in Asia), Denise Ajiri, Agustin Armendariz, Jelena Cosic, Isabella Cota, Ben Dooley, Sam Ellefson, Jesús Escudero, Miguel Fiandor Gutiérrez, Micah Reddy and Delphine Reuter (ICIJ).

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