A Taiwanese man was sentenced to 30 years in prison for operating Incognito Market, one of the world’s largest online narcotics marketplaces that sold over $105 million worth of illegal drugs to customers worldwide.
24-year-old Rui-Siang Lin (also known as Ruisiang Lin, Pharoah, and faro) was arrested in May 2024 and pleaded guilty in December to money laundering, conspiring to distribute narcotics, and conspiring to sell adulterated and misbranded medication.
U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon, who imposed the sentence, said that this was the “most serious drug crime I have ever been confronted with in 27.5 years” and called Incognito Market “a business that made [Lin] a drug kingpin.”
According to the complaint, the marketplace facilitated the sale of more than one ton of narcotics, including 295 kilograms of methamphetamine, 364 kilograms of cocaine, 112 kilograms of amphetamine, and 92 kilograms of ecstasy (MDMA), “some of which were laced with fentanyl.”
It also hosted more than 1,800 vendors, over 400,000 customer accounts, and processed more than 640,000 transactions, with Lin controlling all operations and maintaining ultimate decision-making authority over the multimillion-dollar enterprise.
Customers purchased drugs on Incognito Market using cryptocurrency via a payment platform called “Incognito Bank,” and the marketplace generated more than $83,624,577 in revenue, netting Lin over $4.1 million from his 5% commission on transactions.
In July 2022 and August 2023, law enforcement obtained search warrants to access three servers used to host and operate the marketplace: one stored marketplace transaction data, another was used to block DDoS attacks, and the third processed all cryptocurrency transactions.
Lin ran Incognito Market from October 2020 to March 2024, when he abruptly shut it down and threatened to release transaction histories for vendors and customers who wouldn’t pay an additional fee.
“Rui-Siang Lin was one of the world’s most prolific drug traffickers, using the internet to sell more than $105 million of illegal drugs throughout this country and across the globe,” said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton on Tuesday.
“While Lin made millions, his offenses had devastating consequences. He is responsible for at least one tragic death, and he exacerbated the opioid crisis and caused misery for more than 470,000 narcotics users and their families.”
In addition to 30 years in prison, Judge McMahon also sentenced Lin to five years of supervised release and ordered him to forfeit $105,045,109.67.
Last month, a Virginia man who co-created Empire Market, one of the largest dark web marketplaces at the time, pleaded guilty to federal drug conspiracy charges for facilitating $430 million in illegal transactions and a Slovakian national admitted to helping operate a darknet marketplace that sold narcotics, cybercrime tools and services, fake government IDs, and stolen personal information for more than two years.
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