Incognito Market Operator Sentenced to 30 Years for Darknet Drug Trafficking and Money Laundering
A U.S. federal court sentenced Rui-Siang Lin (24), a Taiwanese national accused of operating the dark web narcotics marketplace Incognito Market, to 30 years in prison for conspiring to distribute narcotics, money laundering, and conspiring to sell adulterated/misbranded medication. Prosecutors said Lin ran the marketplace under the alias “Pharaoh” and oversaw more than $105 million in narcotics sales, including large quantities of cocaine and methamphetamine and pills purported to be oxycodone, some allegedly laced with fentanyl; the sentence also included five years of supervised release and forfeiture of more than $105 million.
Authorities described Incognito Market as a large-scale, “polished” online drug marketplace that supported cryptocurrency payments (including an internal payment mechanism described as “Incognito Bank”) and charged vendors a 5% commission. Reporting cited platform scale estimates of roughly 1,800 vendors, 400,000+ customer accounts, and ~640,000 transactions, with Lin exercising ultimate control over operations while living abroad (including in St. Lucia) and shutting the site down in March 2024; Lin was arrested in May 2024 after arriving at JFK Airport en route to Singapore and pleaded guilty in December 2024. Investigators also obtained warrants (reported as in 2022 and 2023) to access servers supporting marketplace operations, including transaction data, DDoS protection, and cryptocurrency processing.
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