The creator of Incognito Market, an online black market that used cryptocurrency as its primary payment rail, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after blockchain transaction analysis linked him to the platform, U.S. authorities said.
The Justice Department said a Manhattan court gave Rui‑Siang Lin three decades behind bars for owning and operating Incognito, which sold about $105 million worth of illicit narcotics from its October 2020 launch until its closure in March 2024. Lin pleaded guilty in December 2024 to conspiring to distribute narcotics, money laundering, and conspiring to sell misbranded medication.
Incognito allowed users to buy and sell drugs using Bitcoin (BTC) and Monero (XMR), taking a 5% commission. Authorities identified Lin after the FBI traced the platform’s cryptocurrency transactions to an exchange account in his name. Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said, “Today’s sentence puts traffickers on notice: you cannot hide in the shadows of the Internet. Our larger message is simple: the internet, ‘decentralization,’ ‘blockchain’ — any technology — is not a license to operate a narcotics distribution business.”
In addition to the prison term, Lin was sentenced to five years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit more than $105 million.
According to the DOJ, Lin closed Incognito in March 2024 and stole at least $1 million from users who had funds on the platform. He then attempted to extort users, demanding payments to avoid public disclosure of their histories and crypto addresses. Authorities arrested Lin, a Taiwanese national, at New York’s JFK Airport in May 2024 after tracing the market’s crypto transfers to an exchange account under his name.
The FBI reported that a wallet Lin controlled received funds from a known Incognito wallet and then forwarded them to his exchange account. Investigators traced at least four transfers showing Bitcoin originating from Incognito was swapped for Monero through a swapping service and then deposited to the exchange account. The exchange provided a photo of Lin’s Taiwanese driver’s license, plus an email and phone number used to open the account; those identifiers were linked to a Namecheap account. The Namecheap account used funds from Lin’s crypto wallet and exchange account to buy a domain promoting Incognito, the agency said.
Authorities also noted Lin’s exchange deposits grew with the market’s activity — from roughly $63,000 in 2021 to nearly $4.2 million in 2023 at one exchange, and about $4.5 million deposited at a separate exchange between July and November 2023.
The sentencing highlights law enforcement’s ability to follow cryptocurrency flows, even when darknet markets use privacy coins or swapping services.
