Kevin Spacey made a new movie with a Russian — a figure in the world's largest cryptocurrency scam

Kevin Spacey has over 20 years of experience as a director. However, after being accused of sexual abuse of men and several other crimes of the same nature, his career fell into disarray In 2023, all charges were dropped against Spacey. And in 2025, the director decided to resume his work and presented a sci-fi action film called Holiguards Saga — The Portal of Force at the Venice Film Festival.

Here’s the trailer shown in Venice for Kevin Spacey’s Holiguards Saga – The Portal of Force starring him with Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts and Tyrese, all seen in this 2-minute clip. pic.twitter.com/5pXXkjMyWe

— Chris Gardner (@chrissgardner) August 31, 2025

As it turned out, Spacey’s choice could bury his career forever. The screenplay for the movie The Guardians Saga — Portal of Power was written by a man wanted by the US authorities for his involvement in a Ponzi scheme (pyramid scheme). He is a Russian man, Vladimir Okhotnikov, better known as Lado, who, together with his team, built one of the largest Ponzi schemes in the world. Lado also starred in the movie and produced it.

In 2022, the SEC sued Forsage’s founders, including Okhotnikov, for fraud.

According to the investigation, more than $340 million was swindled from the victims through the Forsage DeFi project.

The following year, the Department of Justice indicted Okhotnikov and his partners for operating a “global Ponzi scheme and pyramid scheme,” which federal prosecutors at the time called the first criminal fraud case in U.S. history “involving a Ponzi scheme.”

The Justice Department alleged that although the Forsage platform advertised itself as a sophisticated and profitable decentralized matrix project, it was actually based on Ethereum, Tron, and BNB Chain smart contracts that automatically redirected funds from new Forsage investors to previous investors. The Department of Justice stated that more than 80% of investors lost money investing in the project.

Okhotnikov has repeatedly denied the allegations that Forsage intentionally deceived its customers. In a YouTube video posted shortly after the SEC announced its charges against him, Okhotnikov said that Forsage was not a scam because “real scams can never win people’s hearts.”

Lado-Okhotnikov lives in Dubai, where he remains outside the jurisdiction of the United States. In a recent interview, he told the Jerusalem Post that he wrote the film in part to reflect his libertarian worldview and to explore the eternal struggle between conformity and freedom. The entrepreneur is currently focused on Holiverse, a metaverse health startup that promises to one day virtually simulate users’ bodies by integrating “different products, biohacking, genetics, creativity, and self-development” to potentially extend life expectancy.