Incognito Market Founder ‘Pharoah’ Handed 30-Year Sentence; Ordered to Forfeit $105M
Rui-Siang Lin, alias ‘Pharoah,’ receives a three-decade sentence for running the $100M Incognito Market, as on-chain errors led to his capture.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has sentenced Rui-Siang Lin, 24, to 30 years in prison for operating Incognito Market, a $100 million darknet narcotics hub. The sentencing, delivered yesterday by Judge Colleen McMahon, marks the conclusion of one of the most sophisticated dark web prosecutions in recent history.
Lin, a Taiwanese national known online as "Pharoah," was also ordered to forfeit $105,045,109 in illicit proceeds. The sentence follows his guilty plea to narcotics conspiracy and money laundering charges.
The "Amazon of Drugs" Model
Incognito Market operated from October 2020 to March 2024, facilitating over 640,000 transactions. Unlike earlier, clunky iterations of darknet bazaars, Lin built a slick, user-friendly e-commerce platform complete with branding, customer service, and vendor registration fees. The DOJ filing confirms the platform moved over one ton of narcotics, including cocaine, methamphetamines, and misbranded prescription drugs.
"Rui-Siang Lin was one of the world’s most prolific drug traffickers… using the internet to sell more than $105 million of illegal drugs throughout this country and across the globe.", U.S. Attorney’s Office, SDNY
OpSec Failure & On-Chain Trace
Lin’s downfall stemmed from a critical operational security failure involving crypto swaps. While Incognito Market accepted Bitcoin (BTC) and Monero (XMR) to obfuscate trails, investigators traced funds from the marketplace’s admin wallet to a swapping service, and subsequently to a centralized exchange account registered in Lin’s real name. This on-chain link pierced the anonymity shield usually provided by Monero, which traded down 3% to $374.88 following the news.
The Exit Scam Finale
The marketplace’s closure in March 2024 was not a clean shutdown. In its final days, Lin orchestrated an "exit scam," blocking user withdrawals and extorting vendors. He threatened to leak transaction data to law enforcement unless users paid a ransom, a move that destroyed trust in the platform moments before his arrest. Lin’s 30-year sentence serves as a grim benchmark for darknet operators, echoing the lifetime severity handed to Silk Road’s Ross Ulbricht.
