On Tuesday, Rui-Siang Lin was sentenced to 30 years in prison for running “Incognito Market,” a dark web platform that prosecutors say “sold more than $105 million of narcotics—including more than 1,000 kilograms of cocaine, over 1,000 kilograms of methamphetamines, hundreds of kilograms of other narcotics, and more than 4 kilograms of purported ‘oxycodone’,” between 2020 and 2024. Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced the sentencing on Tuesday, calling Lin “one of the world’s most prolific drug traffickers,” taking a five percent cut from the crypto transactions as a “bank account” while keeping buyers and sellers anonymous from each other.
By comparison, Ross “Dread Pirate Roberts” Ulbricht, who ran the Silk Road dark web marketplace, initially received a life sentence after it was shut down in 2013, and was pardoned by President Trump early last year. Thomas White created Silk Road 2.0 a year after the first one shut down, and was eventually sentenced to five years in prison in the UK.
Lin, who also went by “Pharoah” online, pleaded guilty in December 2024 to “narcotics conspiracy, money laundering, and conspiracy to sell adulterated and misbranded medication.” As noted by CoinDesk, in the initial criminal complaint, an FBI investigator said they were able to identify Lin as the operator because he used his real name and address while registering the domain. Before shutting down operations in 2024, he apparently stole from his own users:
“In March 2024, Lin closed Incognito by stealing at least $1 million that its users had on deposit in the Incognito Bank. In addition, Lin attempted to extort his coconspirators. LIN demanded that the Incognito buyers and vendors pay him, or he would publish their user history and cryptocurrency addresses online. In a posting on the Incognito site, LIN wrote “YES, THIS IS AN EXTORTION!!!,” as depicted below.”
