🚫 Incognito Market Founder Rui-Siang Lin Sentenced to 30 Years for $105M Crypto Drug Operation
⚠️ The darknet marketplace processed 640,000 cryptocurrency transactions across more than 400,000 buyer accounts before an exit scam shut it down in March 2024. Rui-Siang Lin, the 24-year-old Taiwanese founder of darknet drug marketplace Incognito Market, has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for operating a $105 million crypto-powered narcotics operation, the U. S. Department of Justice announced on Tuesday.
🔔 U. S. District Judge Colleen McMahon, presiding in the Southern District of New York, called the case the most serious drug crime she had encountered in over 27 years on the bench, labeling Lin a “drug kingpin.” Lin pleaded guilty in December 2024 to charges including engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, narcotics conspiracy, and money laundering. The court also ordered $105,045,109.67 in forfeiture.
📈 Operating under the alias “Pharoah,” Lin ran the marketplace from October 2020 through March 2024. He facilitated sales of more than 1,000 kilograms each of cocaine and methamphetamine, alongside hundreds of kilograms of other controlled substances, including fentanyl-laced pills linked to at least one overdose death. “Today’s sentence puts traffickers on notice: you cannot hide in the shadows of the Internet,” U. S. Attorney Jay Clayton said. “The internet, ‘decentralization,’ ‘blockchain’ — any technology — is not a license to operate a narcotics distribution business.”
📌 At the center of Incognito Market’s operations was a custodial crypto wallet system called “Incognito Bank,” where users deposited BTC or Monero into on-site accounts, according to the DOJ. Transactions were processed internally between buyer and seller accounts, and the platform collected a 5% commission on every sale. According to court ruling details, Lin pocketed over $6 million in profits from fee compensations.
▶️ In March 2024, Lin shut down the marketplace in an exit scam, stealing at least $1 million held in user deposits and threatening to publish transaction histories unless vendors paid extortion fees ranging from $100 to $20,000. The scheme revealed that the marketplace’s promised encryption and message deletion features had never functioned — user data had been retained throughout the platform’s entire operation.
