DeepDotWeb was the primary source of darknet news and safety information for six years. When it was seized by the USA’s FBI all of its articles were removed from the internet, our collective memory. Its publications were inconvenient for governments, exposing invasive investigative techniques and covering court filings that prosecutors prefer to stay buried and paywalled. Initially, users from the USA were prohibited from using the Incognito, but now they welcome buyers and sellers from all over the world. The team behind Incognito Market also created libre forum, a darknet discussion board. “This arrest underscores the dedicated, ongoing efforts of law enforcement to identify and dismantle illicit drug networks operating from every shadowy recess of the marketplace,” NYPD Commissioner Edward A. Caban said in a statement.
The arrangement allowed buyers and sellers to remain anonymous to one another. On March 12, 2020, before Incognito Market launched, LIN emailed himself a rough diagram of a darknet marketplace. That diagram, which is pictured below, contains features consistent with the operation of Incognito Market. That exchange account, too, was registered in Lin’s real name, according to the DOJ. According to the FBI, the market took nearly a year to catch on, with virtually no sales during that time. But by late 2021, Incognito had started to attract users, and by the middle of 2022, the market had drawn enough vendors and sellers to generate more than $1.5 million a month in sales.
The success in tying cryptocurrency to a real identity reinforces law enforcement’s confidence in tackling crypto-enabled crimes. We may see even greater use of blockchain analytics warrants and collaboration with crypto exchanges. Additionally, the case highlights the value of interagency task forces (like the El Dorado Darkweb-Cryptocurrency Task Force cited in Lin’s arrest). This model of combining drug enforcement agents, cybercrime experts, and even financial regulators is likely to be replicated for future darknet investigations. If convicted, Lin faces a mandatory minimum penalty of life in prison for engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise. He could also receive a maximum penalty of life in prison for narcotics conspiracy, a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for money laundering, and a maximum penalty of five years in prison for conspiracy to sell adulterated and misbranded medication.
The first charge – sometimes called the “kingpin statute” – carries a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison. Ross Ulbricht, the creator and operator of the now-shuttered Silk Road darknet drug marketplace, was found guilty of the same crime and sentenced to life in prison. The narcotics conspiracy charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum potential sentence of life in prison. According to the investigation, Incognito Market was an online narcotics bazaar that existed on the dark web. Since that time, and through its closing in March 2024, Incognito Market sold more than $100 million in narcotics — including hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamines.
Incognito Market Transaction Fees
He claims to be an employee of Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, working as a “diplomatic specialist” in the technical section of the Taiwanese embassy in St Lucia. Previous jobs include a three-year internship at Cathay Financial Holding as a “Backend and Blockchain R&D” since November 2019. The former Incognito Market administrator claims to have graduated from National Taiwan University in June 2023. On May 18, the latest post on LinkedIn was related to the celebration of obtaining the Chainalysis Reactor Certification (CRC). New Incognito Market users are treated to an ad for $450 worth of heroin. However, lacked transparency around actual resolution rates and limited moderator insight as a user.
Community Highlights
He faces one count of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, one count of narcotics conspiracy, one count of money laundering, and one count of conspiracy to sell adulterated and misbranded medication. “Stay posted and fuck LE,” Pharoah wrote, using the abbreviation LE to mean “law enforcement.” Antinalysis eventually returned, however, and pivoted last year to acting instead as a service for swapping bitcoin for monero and vice versa. A 2022 Twitter thread about Incognito posted by Eileen Ormsby, an author of several dark-web-focused books including The Darkest Web, shows how the market by that time had added features that may have helped it to catch the attention of security- and safety-conscious users.
Active Darknet Markets
- The mission of the EDTF is to disrupt, dismantle, or render ineffective, organizations involved in the laundering of proceeds of narcotics trafficking and other financial crimes.
- The court proceedings in Lin’s case showcase several legal implications for darknet market operators.
- The indictment includes several images from the site, including its splash page.
- For example, in November 2023, an undercover law enforcement agent received several tablets that purported to be oxycodone, which were purchased on Incognito Market.
- We do not affiliate with darknet markets; our purpose is solely to provide information for research purposes.
- TRM has identified structured withdrawals from the market to personal wallets and then to services with less stringent KYC.
He threatened to reveal all the transaction details on Incognito, including the names of buyers and sellers, which could identify people involved in illegal orders. What’s striking is how Lin used this data as a weapon, basically forcing his own users to pay or face legal action. This shows how vulnerable dark web users really are, even if they think they are safe. It’s a warning to anyone who believes their anonymity on such sites is foolproof, especially when the site operator can be the biggest threat. Incognito is entirely drug-oriented, with everything else being prohibitted for sale. Additionally, the market staff imposed a full ban on all opiates and opioids (hydrocodone, oxycodone, heroin, etc), along with all other narcotics that fall under the deliriant class, not just fentenyl like many other darknet markets.
Access Our Coverage Of TRON, Solana And 23 Other Blockchains
Users of Incognito Market were able to search thousands of listings for illegal narcotics, including heroin, cocaine, LSD, MDMA, oxycodone, methamphetamines, ketamine, and alprazolam. Based on a public analysis made by researchers on January 9, 2024, the marketplace had 2,144 users, 237 sellers, 1,102 products, and 1,565 total orders. Lin’s GitHub account describes him as a “backend and blockchain engineer, Monero enthusiast.” This GitHub account has approximately 44 publicly available software coding projects.
Incognito Darknet
As soon as Lin transited through a U.S. jurisdiction (JFK Airport in New York), authorities pounced. On May 18, 2024, Rui-Siang Lin was arrested by FBI and HSI agents at JFK, effectively ambushing him during a layover before he could continue elsewhere. This tactic – arresting a target during international transit – is often used when a suspect is based in a country with no easy extradition. Taiwan does not have a formal extradition treaty with the U.S., so luring or waiting for Lin to enter U.S. soil was the surest way to get custody of him. The arrest operation at the airport was coordinated and swift, giving Lin little time to react or attempt any digital sabotage (like wiping devices).
Year-old Man Accused Of Running $100 Million Online Narcotics Marketplace
Another prong of the investigation was old-fashioned OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence) and surveillance. His LinkedIn and social media posts – bragging about Chainalysis certifications and showing diagrams of darknet money flows – may not have been direct evidence of running Incognito, but they painted a picture of someone deeply involved in the subject matter. It likely raised eyebrows that a young diplomat was so invested in dark web analytics. Moreover, the Namecheap domain registrations under Lin’s name provided a concrete link between his real-life identity and the dark web (through that market-tracking site). Investigators could use that to build probable cause that Lin and Pharaoh were one and the same. With mounting evidence, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York quietly filed charges and obtained an indictment against Lin under seal.
We do not affiliate with darknet markets; our purpose is solely to provide information for research purposes. As the digital landscape evolves, so does the Incognito Darknet Market. Law enforcement agencies and cybersecurity experts continually adapt their strategies to monitor and regulate the darknet.
- Reports say that the 780GB worth of data includes stolen codes from FIFA 21.
- Amidst the global crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, markets have fallen, and the crypto industry has been also hit.
- There are more hypotheses to follow, but the most reasonable one is that there could be some relationship in terms of crypto accounts shared between ‘FatherBear’ and ‘Pharao’, which could lead to other traces.
- The success in tying cryptocurrency to a real identity reinforces law enforcement’s confidence in tackling crypto-enabled crimes.
- But it raises the troubling possibility that a former dark-web kingpin—one who was still extorting his own users—was perhaps playing both sides of the crypto tracing game, says Elliptic’s Tom Robinson.
“Incognito Market” Founder Arrested At JFK Airport, Accused Of Selling $100 Million Of Illegal Drugs On The Dark Web
Pharoah is centralizing the darknet to a scale that previous darknet market admins have only dreamed of. The Incognito admin is one of the fastest builders that the darknet has ever seen. Many vendors around the world partner with Incognito Darknet because the Incognito Darknet Store has some of the lowest fees on the market and a good reputation among vendors. “As alleged, Rui-Siang Lin was the architect of Incognito, a $100 million dark web scheme to traffic deadly drugs to the United States and around the world,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. Incognito has quickly grown to become one of the most trusted and reliable trading platforms on the Darknet, providing users with the confidence to make secure and profitable trades.
Crypto’s Role And Law Enforcement’s Leverage
However, larger “Level 5” vendors are asked to cough up $20,000 payments. Acquiring the latest .onion link via forums, registering my account proved straightforward after encoding credentials… don’t forget to check incognito market link what we posted on our page. While this week’s takedown recalls the 2013 shutdown of Silk Road, the evolution of darknet commerce is stark. Silk Road popularized the use of Bitcoin, anonymizing technologies like Tor, and vendor reputation systems. But today’s markets are more fragmented, more resilient, and harder to track.
On one hand, he profited from a trade causing real harm (overdose deaths from fentanyl-laced pills sold on Incognito were very possible, and indeed the site dealt in those). On the other hand, he engaged with law enforcement and industry in fighting crypto-crime, perhaps rationalizing his actions or hedging his bets. In the end, the strategies Lin used to operate Incognito Market were a blend of tech entrepreneurship, underworld cunning, and audacious deception.
