Incognito Market 30 years for trafficking tons of drugs

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York recently announced a major victory in the fight against dark web drug trafficking. Attorney Jay Clayton revealed that Rui-Siang Lin, founder and operator of the “Incognito Market” drug marketplace, was sentenced to 30 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $105 million in restitution.

Clayton described Lin as one of the most prolific online drug traffickers in the world. For at least four years, the Taiwanese-born man handled a massive volume of e-commerce transactions totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Lin launched the Incognito Market website in October 2020, taking advantage of the Tor browser’s anonymity network to evade law enforcement.

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“Today’s sentence is a warning to traffickers: you cannot hide in the shadows of the internet. And our broader message is simple: the internet, ‘decentralization,’ ‘blockchain’ – any technology – is not a license to operate a drug distribution business,” Clayton said.

From October 2020 until the site’s closure in March 2024, Lin facilitated the sale of more than 1.000 kilograms of cocaine, 1.000 kilograms of methamphetamine, and hundreds of kilograms of other illegal drugs. Incognito Market also sold four kilograms of oxycodone, a synthetic painkiller, which was laced with fentanyl and caused the death of a 27-year-old customer from Arkansas.

Incognito Market reportedly had a customer base of over 400.000 buyers and 1.800 sellers. The market processed over 640.000 individual drug transactions, collecting more than $105 million in a self-managed cryptocurrency “bank.” In March 2024, Lin allegedly stole at least $1 million from the account before shutting down the site. He also attempted to extort additional funds from Incognito’s customers and suppliers by threatening to publish the site’s data.

Lin, who was also known online as “Pharaoh,” reportedly developed the Incognito Market code himself.

At the same time, he led a four-day training course for St. Lucian police officers on “Cybercrime and Cryptocurrency,” while also managing his online drug trafficking business.

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