Forsage Co-Founder Extradited from Thailand, Pleads Not Guilty in $340M Crypto Pyramid Case
A Ukrainian national accused of helping run a major DeFi fraud scheme has arrived in U.S. custody and is set for trial in July.
Olena Oblamska, 42, known online as "Lola Ferrari" and described by scheme participants as its self-styled "goddess," was extradited from Thailand to the United States on May 9, 2026, and appeared before U.S. District Court in Portland, Oregon, on May 11 and 12. She entered a not-guilty plea to a single charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Federal prosecutors allege she was a co-founder of Forsage, a purported decentralised finance platform that collected roughly $340 million from investors worldwide before U.S. authorities moved against it. Oblamska is one of four defendants named in the February 2023 federal indictment, alongside Vladimir Okhotnikov, Mikhail Sergeev, and Sergey Maslakov. A four-day jury trial is scheduled for July 14, 2026. Conviction carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. Thailand's Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau arrested Oblamska in Chalong, Phuket, seizing mobile phones, computers, a laptop, an iPad, and documents before facilitating her transfer to U.S. custody.
How Forsage Worked
Forsage launched in January 2020, presenting itself as a legitimate DeFi investment platform built on Ethereum. In practice, users paid to enter a matrix-style system where funds from new recruits were automatically routed to earlier participants. U.S. regulators and prosecutors have described this structure as the mechanical definition of a pyramid scheme, with the SEC characterising it as "a textbook pyramid scheme" and the DOJ indictment referring to a "combined Ponzi-pyramid scheme."
The platform later expanded to the Tron and Binance Smart Chain networks.
The scheme's use of smart contracts, self-executing code stored on a blockchain, gave it a superficial resemblance to genuine decentralised finance products. At its peak, Forsage ranked as the second most active smart contract on Ethereum by daily transaction count, according to peer-reviewed blockchain research published at the 2023 Financial Cryptography conference.
That volume was not a sign of utility. It was the machinery of fraud running at scale.
That same peer-reviewed analysis provides a detailed accounting of the damage. More than 88 percent of all Ethereum program participants lost money. Over 50 percent received no payout at all. More than 80 percent of participants received back less than they had originally invested, according to DOJ and blockchain analytics data. Across the Ethereum program alone, victims lost an estimated 305,785 ETH. The top 1,000 users captured roughly half of all profits generated by the scheme, a distribution pattern consistent with a classic pyramid structure rather than any legitimate investment product.
The DOJ's 2023 indictment noted that the automated routing of funds was itself a defining feature of the fraud: "What makes a DeFi Ponzi scheme so dangerous is this ability to automate the scheme through the use of software in order to move funds faster."
A Pattern of Continued Recruitment After Warnings
Forsage founders did not stop when regulators acted. The Philippines Securities and Exchange Commission issued a cease-and-desist order in September 2020, describing Forsage as an illegal crowdfunding scheme operating without registration and without authorisation as a virtual currency entity with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. Montana's Commissioner of Securities followed with its own order in March 2021. According to U.S. court filings, the founders continued operations and publicly denied wrongdoing on video after both orders were issued.
Philippines SEC Chairperson Emilio Aquino, in August 2022 after U.S. charges were filed, described Forsage as "[An] investment scam of such huge scale and proportion" and praised cross-border law enforcement cooperation.
That year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged 11 individuals, including the four founders and seven U.S.-based promoters, with securities fraud violations. The criminal indictment from the Department of Justice followed in February 2023.
Regional Toll: Nigeria, the Philippines, and India
The harm from Forsage fell disproportionately on retail investors in countries where regulatory protections for crypto participants remain limited and where the scheme's multilingual social media campaigns found the largest audiences.
Nigeria is identified in blockchain analytics and social media mapping as one of the most heavily affected markets globally. The country has some of the highest peer-to-peer crypto adoption rates in the world, and Forsage's recruitment mechanics, which resembled familiar multi-level marketing structures, spread rapidly through existing community networks. Researchers and law enforcement observers have noted that local promoters in Nigeria and other heavily affected markets may face civil or criminal exposure in their own jurisdictions as investigations continue.
India was another primary target market, with active Hindi-language promotion and recruitment built around aspirational messaging directed at communities with growing but still early-stage crypto literacy, according to peer-reviewed blockchain analysis from the 2023 Financial Cryptography conference.
In the Philippines, recruitment continued for approximately two years after the national securities regulator formally declared the platform illegal, persisting until U.S. SEC civil charges were filed in August 2022.
More than one million accounts across all programs recorded net losses, according to peer-reviewed blockchain analysis from the 2023 Financial Cryptography conference and supporting on-chain data.
The gap between regulatory action in Western jurisdictions and continued harm in emerging markets is a recurring pattern in cross-border crypto fraud cases, and Forsage represents one of the clearest documented examples of it.
The Primary Suspect Remains Free
Oblamska is not the figure U.S. prosecutors consider the scheme's architect. Vladimir Okhotnikov, a Russian national identified as the primary organiser, remains in Dubai under an international arrest warrant. Okhotnikov fled to Georgia in 2022, where Georgian authorities questioned him about cryptocurrency deposits; he subsequently relocated to the United Arab Emirates, complicating extradition efforts.
In March 2024, a Georgian court convicted him in absentia for laundering $1.1 million in Forsage proceeds and sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment. He has not been extradited.
Okhotnikov drew renewed international attention in 2025 when he appeared as co-writer of "Holiguards Saga: The Portal of Force," a science fiction film directed by and starring Kevin Spacey, with co-stars Dolph Lundgren, Tyrese Gibson, and Eric Roberts. The film, part of a broader venture Okhotnikov branded as Holiverse, premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Portuguese and Georgian investigators subsequently examined the film's financing for potential links to fraud proceeds.
What the July Trial Means
The Forsage prosecution is widely cited as among the first major criminal cases to explicitly frame a DeFi smart contract product as a criminal instrument.
The July 2026 trial will test how U.S. federal wire fraud statutes apply to automated, blockchain-based schemes operating across multiple countries simultaneously. One question the case raises for developers is whether automating fund flows through smart contract code reduces legal accountability. U.S. prosecutors have argued directly that it does not, and a conviction would cement that position in federal case law. For international enforcement, Thailand's Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau has drawn attention as a model of regional cooperation, having located and arrested a defendant who had moved across multiple jurisdictions before Oblamska's transfer to U.S. custody. For regulators, developers, and retail investors in markets where enforcement remains thin, the outcome will carry weight well beyond Oregon.