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Rui-Siang Lin, founder of the crypto-powered dark web marketplace Incognito Market, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for operating a platform that facilitated over $105M in narcotics sales, The Block reports.
What's the Scoop?
- The Sentence: A federal judge sentenced the 24-year-old Lin to 30 years in prison and ordered him to forfeit $105M. Lin pleaded guilty in December 2024 to narcotics conspiracy, money laundering, and conspiring to sell adulterated medication.
- Scale of Operations: Incognito Market operated from October 2020 to March 2024, growing to over 400K buyer accounts and 1,800 vendors. The platform facilitated more than 640K transactions and sold over one ton of illicit drugs worldwide, including heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, methamphetamine, and MDMA.
- Crypto Infrastructure: The platform ran an internal system called "Incognito Bank" that allowed users to deposit crypto into on-site accounts. After transactions completed, crypto transferred from buyer to seller minus a 5% commission.
- Exit Scam: When Lin shut down the marketplace in March 2024, prosecutors said he took at least $1M in user deposits and attempted to extort participants by threatening to publish their transaction histories and crypto addresses.
Bankless Take:
Crime is crime and while regulatory enforcement has largely ended against established industry players, when it comes to such blatant criminal activity — particularly for that related to the administration’s rightful crusade against Fentanyl — the justice system is making no exceptions. Hopefully these cases don’t weigh too much on policy debates as regulators decide how tightly to control crypto infrastructure.
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