Rui-Siang Lin, the owner and operator of Incognito Market, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in running one of the world’s largest online narcotics marketplaces. The announcement was made by Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Lin pleaded guilty on December 16, 2024, before U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon, who imposed the sentence.
“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. “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. 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.”
Court documents detail that Incognito Market operated on the dark web from October 2020 until its closure in March 2024. During this period, it sold over $105 million worth of narcotics including cocaine, methamphetamines, heroin, LSD, MDMA, oxycodone (some laced with fentanyl), ketamine, and alprazolam. The marketplace enabled users worldwide to access its services via Tor browser and used features similar to legitimate e-commerce sites such as branding and customer service.
Lin managed Incognito Market under the pseudonym “Pharaoh” and oversaw all aspects of its operations including supervision of employees and vendors. Vendors were required to register with an admission fee and paid a 5% commission on each sale which funded site operations such as employee salaries and server costs. Buyers deposited cryptocurrency into accounts within an internal system called “Incognito Bank,” which allowed anonymous transactions between buyers and sellers.
According to evidence presented at sentencing, Lin collected over $6 million in profits from Incognito Market while based in locations including St. Lucia. While managing Incognito Market remotely, he also led training sessions for St. Lucian police officers about cybercrime and cryptocurrency.
The platform grew rapidly under Lin’s leadership with more than 400,000 buyer accounts serviced by over 1,800 vendors conducting upwards of 640,000 individual transactions.
In January 2022, Lin changed site policy to explicitly allow vendors to sell opiates on Incognito Market. Undercover law enforcement purchased tablets advertised as oxycodone that were found to be counterfeit fentanyl pills through testing in November 2023. In September 2022 a fatal overdose occurred when a buyer consumed fentanyl-laced pills bought from Incognito Market.
When closing down Incognito Market in March 2024, Lin stole at least $1 million left by users in site deposits and attempted to extort buyers and vendors by threatening to release their user history unless they paid him additional money.
Judge McMahon told Lin during sentencing that Incognito Market was “a business that made [him] a drug kingpin,” adding it was “the most serious drug crime I have ever been confronted with in 27.5 years.”
Lin received five years of supervised release following his prison term along with forfeiture totaling over $105 million.
U.S. Attorney Clayton commended investigative efforts by several agencies including the FBI; New York City Police Department; Homeland Security Investigations; Drug Enforcement Administration; Food and Drug Administration Office of Criminal Investigations; and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
This case is part of a broader initiative led by the Homeland Security Task Force established under Executive Order 14159 aimed at dismantling criminal cartels operating domestically or internationally.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ryan B. Finkel and Nicholas Chiuchiolo handled prosecution as part of the Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit.
