The operator of Incognito Market, a dark web marketplace built around cryptocurrency, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison after blockchain tracing helped U.S. authorities identify the person behind the platform.
The U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday that a Manhattan court handed Rui-Siang Lin a 30-year sentence for owning and running Incognito, which facilitated more than $105 million in illicit drug sales from its launch in October 2020 until it was shut down in March 2024.
Lin pleaded guilty in December 2024 to charges including conspiracy to distribute narcotics, money laundering, and conspiring to sell misbranded drugs.
Incognito Market enabled users to trade drugs using Bitcoin and Monero, taking a 5% commission on transactions. Investigators ultimately traced the platform’s cryptocurrency flows to an exchange account registered in Lin’s name, leading to his arrest and conviction.
“Today’s sentence puts traffickers on notice: you cannot hide in the shadows of the Internet,” said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. “The broader message is clear — the internet, decentralization, blockchain, or any technology is not a license to run a narcotics distribution business.”
Along with his prison sentence, Lin was also given five years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit more than $105 million.
According to the Justice Department, Lin shut down Incognito in March 2024 and stole at least $1 million in user funds held on the platform.
Operating under the online alias “Pharoah,” Lin then attempted to extort Incognito users, threatening to publicly expose their transaction histories and cryptocurrency addresses unless buyers and vendors paid him.
Several months later, in May 2024, U.S. authorities arrested Lin, a Taiwanese national, at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport after the FBI linked him to Incognito through blockchain analysis. Investigators traced the platform’s cryptocurrency flows to an exchange account registered in Lin’s name.
According to the FBI, a wallet controlled by Lin received funds from a wallet known to belong to Incognito, which were then transferred to his exchange account. Investigators identified at least four transactions in which Bitcoin originating from Incognito was sent from Lin’s wallet to a crypto swapping service, converted into Monero (XMR), and subsequently deposited at the exchange.
The exchange provided the FBI with a copy of Lin’s Taiwanese driver’s license used to open the account, along with an associated email address and phone number. Authorities later connected the email and phone number to an account at domain registrar Namecheap.
The FBI said the Namecheap account was funded using Lin’s crypto wallet and exchange account and was used to purchase a domain for a website promoting Incognito.
Investigators also noted that deposits into Lin’s exchange accounts increased in step with Incognito’s growth—rising from about $63,000 in 2021 to nearly $4.2 million in 2023. A separate exchange account linked to Lin reportedly received an additional $4.5 million between July and November 2023.
