TL;DR: The US 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, ordered to forfeit over $105 million, and given five years of supervised release.
Clayton described Lin as one of the world's most prolific online narcotics traffickers. For at least four years, the Taiwan-born man managed a massive volume of e-commerce transactions totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Lin launched the Incognito Market website in October 2020, exploiting the Tor browser's anonymous network in an attempt to evade law enforcement.
"Today's sentence puts traffickers on notice: you cannot hide in the shadows of the Internet. And our larger message is simple: the internet, 'decentralization,' 'blockchain' – any technology – is not a license to operate a narcotics distribution business," Clayton said.
From October 2020 until he shut down the website 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 illicit drugs. Incognito Market also sold four kilograms of counterfeit 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 more than 400,000 buyers and 1,800 vendors. The marketplace 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 customers and vendors, threatening to publicly release the site's data.
Lin, who was known online as "Pharaoh," reportedly developed Incognito Market's code himself. At the same time, he led a four-day training course for St. Lucian police officers on "Cybercrime and Cryptocurrency," while managing his online drug trafficking operation.
US District Judge Colleen McMahon described Incognito Market as the most serious drug case she had encountered in her 30-year career. Lin pled guilty before Judge McMahon on December 16, 2024, concluding a complex investigation involving the FBI, New York City Police Department, Homeland Security Investigations, the Food and Drug Administration, and other major federal agencies.
As Clayton emphasized, there is nothing "magical" or invincible about darknets such as Tor. While the onion router network can provide secure communication and web browsing for privacy-conscious users, it cannot serve as a permanent "safe haven" for drug traffickers, CSAM-related crimes, or other illegal activities.
Kingpin of dark web-based drug marketplace "Incognito Market" sentenced to 30 years
