Rui-Siang Lin, a 24-year-old Taiwanese national, has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for operating the dark web narcotics marketplace "Incognito Market" under the alias "Pharaoh." The sentencing, handed down by U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in the Southern District of New York, follows Lin's guilty plea in December 2024 to charges of narcotics conspiracy, money laundering, and conspiring to sell adulterated and misbranded medication.
The marketplace operated from October 2020 until March 2024, facilitating over 640,000 transactions worth more than $105 million in illegal drug sales to hundreds of thousands of buyers worldwide. The platform sold over 1,000 kilograms each of cocaine and methamphetamines, plus hundreds of kilograms of other narcotics, including fentanyl-laced pills falsely advertised as oxycodone.
Incognito Market functioned as a crypto-enabled platform accessible via the Tor browser. It maintained an internal cryptocurrency "bank" system where users deposited funds into personal accounts. This system allowed for anonymous transactions between buyers and over 1,800 vendors, with Lin collecting a 5% commission on each sale. These commissions generated over $6 million in personal profit for Lin, funding the site's operations and his lifestyle.
In a stark contradiction, while managing the drug empire remotely from St. Lucia, Lin conducted a four-day training session for local police on "Cybercrime and Cryptocurrency," later bragging about it on social media.
The operation had deadly consequences. In January 2022, Lin introduced a policy explicitly allowing opiate sales, leading to fraudulent prescription drug listings. A 27-year-old Arkansas resident died on September 13, 2022, after consuming pills purchased on the platform that tested positive for fentanyl instead of the advertised oxycodone.
Lin shuttered the platform in March 2024 by stealing at least $1 million from user deposits in the Incognito Bank. He then attempted to extort vendors and buyers, threatening to publish their transaction histories and cryptocurrency addresses unless they paid him.
His arrest came in May 2024 at John F. Kennedy International Airport following a multi-agency investigation involving Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the FBI, DEA, FDA, and NYPD. Investigators used blockchain analysis, undercover purchases, and a critical breakthrough: domain registration records that Lin had foolishly filed using his real name, phone number, and address.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton stated, "Today’s sentence puts traffickers on notice: you cannot hide in the shadows of the Internet... the internet, ‘decentralization,’ ‘blockchain’—any technology—is not a license to operate a narcotics distribution business." Judge McMahon described the operation as "the most serious drug crime I have ever been confronted with in 27.5 years" on the bench.
In addition to the 30-year prison term, Lin was sentenced to five years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $105,045,109.67. Ari Redbord of TRM Labs noted the sentence "reflects how courts now view large darkweb markets as core infrastructure of the illicit underbelly of the crypto ecosystem, not fringe platforms," sending a clear message that running such platforms carries consequences comparable to major organized crime.
