Taiwanese national sentenced to 30 years for running darknet Incognito Market

A U.S. court sentenced Taiwanese national Rui-Siang Lin (aka “Pharaoh”) to 30 years in prison, five years’ supervised release, and over $105 million in forfeiture for operating the Incognito Market darknet platform (Jan 2022–Mar 2024), which facilitated more than $105 million in narcotics sales across 640,000 transactions by 1,800 vendors to 400,000+ accounts. Prosecutors linked a fatal fentanyl-laced pill purchase to the site and described Lin’s role in managing operations, taking vendor fees, profiting ~$6 million, and conducting an extortion scheme during the site’s shutdown by threatening to expose user histories and crypto addresses. Investigators tied Lin to the marketplace via cryptocurrency-funded domain purchases at Namecheap and matching personal identifiers used across accounts and a U.S. visa application.