Incognito Market Founder Gets 30 Years as DOJ Targets Crypto Drug Trade
Are the DOJ and authorities in the US working overtime? Following high-profile actions against figures like Maduro, a federal judge in New York recently sentenced 24-year-old Taiwanese national Rui-Siang Lin to 30 years in prison. This sentencing marks yet another victory for authorities who have been on an aggressive offensive, cracking down on darknet narcotics trafficking.
Lin was known in digital circles as “Pharaoh” and was the brains behind Incognito Market. The marketplace was a revival of the “Silk Road,” using cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Bitcoin to enable the illegal sale of over $105M worth of drugs.
The ruling comes at a time when the crypto market is shaky, with Ethereum and other top assets stabilizing after a worrying slide on February 3.
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What Was Incognito Market? Who Was The “Pharaoh”?
Incognito Market launched in 2020 as a marketplace for buying and selling drugs. Before closing down in 2024, the platform enabled more than 640,000 transactions, moving over a ton of illicit drugs like heroin, LSD, and cocaine.
For “privacy,” Incognito had a “vault” where users deposited and traded crypto anonymously. For every transaction, “Pharaoh” took a 5% cut. However, the human cost was clear: prosecutors linked the marketplace to at least one death, a 27-year-old in Arkansas who died after overdosing on fentanyl-laced pills sold as oxycodone.
The prosecutor in charge of this case, Jay Clayton, stated that Lin was one of the world’s “most prolific drug traffickers.” By sentencing him to 30 years behind bars, authorities have put traffickers on notice that they cannot hide in the shadows of the internet.
Before his capture at JFK, Lin lived a double life. While managing a multimillion-dollar criminal enterprise from Saint Lucia, he also worked for Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He even trained police officers in Saint Lucia on how to track cybercrime activity and arrest perpetrators.
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The Downfall and Message
After four years of operation, Lin attempted to “rug” platform users. After locking users out of their accounts in March 2024 and stealing roughly $1M in deposits, he attempted to extort his vendors. Lin threatened to leak their identities and crypto addresses to the FBI unless they paid him a “protection fee.”
After years of investigation, law enforcement gained access to Incognito Market’s backend. Once inside, the FBI didn’t just have crypto hashes; they possessed the entire database, including usernames and order lists for over 250,000 transactions.
Later, agents conducted multiple undercover purchases of “oxycodone,” which tests confirmed were fentanyl. These controlled buys allowed the FBI to trace the flow of funds directly to Lin’s personal addresses.
Lin was eventually arrested in May 2024 at JFK Airport while in transit. In addition to his prison term, Judge Colleen McMahon ordered Lin to forfeit $105M and serve five years of supervised release. She called him a “drug kingpin, not a tech hobbyist.” That language signals how courts now view crypto-enabled crime.
Recently the U.S. government gained legal title over more than $400 million in seized assets, including cryptocurrency and real estate, forfeited from Larry Dean Harmon who operated darknet mixing service Helix.
Learn more about this investigation here: https://t.co/f2qiEPCNRH pic.twitter.com/UFcFRLRC8A
— FBI Cyber Division (@FBICyberDiv) January 30, 2026
The 30-year sentence is part of a broader DOJ strategy to dismantle the infrastructure of the dark web. It follows other high-profile actions, including the recent $400M forfeiture tied to Helix, a crypto mixer.
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