A Taiwanese man was sentenced to 30 years in prison for operating Incognito Market, one of the world's largest online narcotics marketplaces that sold over $105 million worth of illegal drugs to customers worldwide.
24-year-old Rui-Siang Lin (also known as Ruisiang Lin, Pharoah, and faro) was arrested in May 2024 and pleaded guilty in December to money laundering, conspiring to distribute narcotics, and conspiring to sell adulterated and misbranded medication.
U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon, who imposed the sentence, said that this was the "most serious drug crime I have ever been confronted with in 27.5 years" and called Incognito Market "a business that made [Lin] a drug kingpin."
According to the complaint, the marketplace facilitated the sale of more than one ton of narcotics, including 295 kilograms of methamphetamine, 364 kilograms of cocaine, 112 kilograms of amphetamine, and 92 kilograms of ecstasy (MDMA), "some of which were laced with fentanyl."
It also hosted more than 1,800 vendors, over 400,000 customer accounts, and processed more than 640,000 transactions, with Lin controlling all operations and maintaining ultimate decision-making authority over the multimillion-dollar enterprise.
Incognito sales volume (Justice Department)
Customers purchased drugs on Incognito Market using cryptocurrency via a payment platform called "Incognito Bank," and the marketplace generated more than $83,624,577 in revenue, netting Lin over $4.1 million from his 5% commission on transactions.
In July 2022 and August 2023, law enforcement obtained search warrants to access three servers used to host and operate the marketplace: one stored marketplace transaction data, another was used to block DDoS attacks, and the third processed all cryptocurrency transactions.
Lin ran Incognito Market from October 2020 to March 2024, when he abruptly shut it down and threatened to release transaction histories for vendors and customers who wouldn't pay an additional fee.
Lin's extortion message (Justice Department)
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