New York authorities have arrested Rui-Siang Lin, who has been accused of operating “Incognito Market,” a $100M dark web marketplace.
Authorities in the state of New York have arrested a 23-year-old individual, accusing him of owning, operating, and profiting from a $100 million dark web narcotics marketplace.
This comes after investigators claimed to have monitored cryptocurrency movements that revealed his true identity.
New York Authorities Arrest Rui Slang Lin
According to a statement released by the Manhattan United States Attorney’s Office, Rui-Siang Lin, also known as “Pharoah” on the internet, was taken into custody at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City on May 18 and made an appearance in federal court on Monday, May 20, following his detention.
“For nearly four years, Rui-Siang Lin allegedly operated ‘Incognito Market,’ which is one of the largest online platforms for the sale of narcotics.
James Smith, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI, accused him of conducting transactions worth $100 million in illegal narcotics and reaping millions of dollars in personal profits.
The Tor web browser, also referred to as the “dark web” or the “dark net,” provided access to Incognito Market, an onion-based e-commerce platform.
By utilizing Bitcoin and Monero as payment mechanisms, it lets users buy and sell a variety of narcotics, including cocaine, LSD, MDMA, and prescription amphetamines like Adderall.
According to the Justice Department’s allegations, the marketplace mandated that buyers and vendors utilize its own cryptocurrency services in order to take a five percent commission on each purchase and provide an escrow service.
The Department of Justice learned that the marketplace shut down in March of this year, coinciding with a previously reported exit fraud that allegedly stole millions of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin and XMR from customers.
The charges against Lin included money laundering, a conspiracy to distribute misbranded pharmaceuticals, and narcotics. They also accused him of running a criminal business.
If found guilty of the criminal enterprise allegation, Lin faces a mandatory life sentence. It is possible to receive a life sentence in prison for the narcotics conspiracy offense.
Lin’s Kraken and Binance accounts now hold cryptocurrency under a forfeiture order from the US Department of Justice. By tracing cryptocurrency transfers from Incognito Market to an unknown centralized cryptocurrency exchange account in Lin’s name, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was able to locate Lin and establish his link to the dark web website.
In a deposition, Mark Rubens, an FBI task force officer, stated that Lin managed a cryptocurrency wallet that received money from the Incognito Market wallet.
Lin subsequently transferred these funds to an exchange account under his name. In his report, Rubens detailed at least four transactions that the FBI had tracked down, which purportedly showed Lin’s cryptocurrency wallet moving Bitcoin derived from Incognito Market to a “swapping service” in order to trade it for XMR.
The FBI claimed that Lin’s cryptocurrency exchange account received the XMR. Reubens wrote that the exchange provided the FBI with Lin’s Taiwanese driver’s license, which they used to open the account, as well as an email address and a phone number.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) asserted that it had established a connection between the email address and phone number in question and a Namecheap account.
They allegedly used this account to purchase a domain name for a website that promoted Incognito Market. During Lin’s tenure with Incognito Market, the deposition revealed an increase in deposits to his cryptocurrency exchange account from approximately $63,000 in 2021 to nearly $4.2 million in 2023.
Additionally, between July and November of the previous year, an unidentified second exchange account received deposits totaling $4.5 million.