A Taiwanese national was sentenced to 30 years in U.S. prison for his role as an administrator of Incognito Market, a popular dark web platform that facilitated millions of dollars worth of drug sales. 

Rui-Siang Lin, 24, pleaded guilty in December 2024 in the Southern District of New York. He was arrested in May 2024 after flying into John F. Kennedy Airport in New York en route to Singapore. In addition to the 30-year sentence, the Taiwanese national was given five years of supervised release and must forfeit more than $105 million. 

Court documents show Lin ran Incognito Market from January 2022 to March 2024 under the moniker “Pharaoh” — supervising the sale of more than $105 million of narcotics — including more than 1,000 kilograms each of cocaine and methamphetamines, hundreds of kilograms of other narcotics, and more than four kilograms of purported “oxycodone,” some of which was laced with fentanyl.  

Prosecutors said Lin’s Incognito Market “was once one of the largest online narcotics marketplaces in the world.”

Lin led the platform even while living and working in St. Lucia on behalf of the government of Taiwan as an assistant technician. Lin even boasted on Facebook of leading a four-day training for St. Lucian police officers about “Cybercrime and Cryptocurrency.”

“Lin’s offenses, the devastation he caused, the gargantuan volume of narcotics for which he is responsible, the sophisticated means and methods of the narcotics enterprise he led, and the millions of dollars he collected, are extraordinary,” prosecutors said. 

“Lin bears responsibility for trafficking more than a ton of drugs.”

‘This is an extortion’

Incognito Market allowed about 1,800 vendors to sell to a customer base exceeding 400,000 accounts. The FBI said the site facilitated about 640,000 narcotics transactions. 

As principal administrator and operator of Incognito Market, Lin supervised all of the platform’s operations and managed vendors, customers, as well as employees of the site. In addition to illegal drugs, the site also featured purportedly legal medication like oxycodone, alprazolam and others. 

Vendors had to pay an upfront admission fee and then 5% of every sale to Lin and his co-conspirators. Lin was able to earn about $6 million in profit from the site. 

The FBI began investigating the platform in 2022, when undercover agents purchased drugs off the site. Law enforcement agencies executed search warrants that July and in August 2023.

The Justice Department tied the death of a 27-year-old from Arkansas to pills sold on the site that were marketed as oxycodone but were actually laced with fentanyl. 

Lin shut the site down in March 2024 and stole at least $1 million from buyers on the platform. He also threatened both vendors and customers on the platform, warning that he would publish their user history and crypto addresses if they did not pay him. 

Court documents show a screenshot from Lin that said “YES, THIS IS AN EXTORTION!!!.”

Agents were able to trace the site’s administration back to Lin because he purchased an internet domain using a cryptocurrency wallet registered with his name. Lin conducted four transactions with the online domain registrar Namecheap.

The Namecheap accounts were tied to Lin’s Taiwanese phone number, an address in Taipei and an email address that had his first name in it. 

Prosecutors noted that in October 2023, Lin applied for a U.S. visa using the same phone number and email address. He submitted a photograph of himself along with the visa application. On one of the other cryptocurrency accounts, he used his Taiwanese driver’s license as proof of his identity.

Lin pleaded guilty to several charges related to distributing narcotics, money laundering and selling misbranded medication. 

Prosecutors argued throughout 2025 for a stiff sentence, writing in court documents that Lin was “responsible for the enormity of Incognito.” His coding skills made the site user friendly and beyond law enforcement’s reach.

“Lin empowered his vendor network with software bots to expand their markets; Lin’s advertising attracted attention; and Lin’s keen understanding of cryptocurrency, and creation of a ‘bank,’ was the oxygen that allowed Incognito to thrive,” prosecutors said.

“Lin is an extraordinary drug dealer, and an online kingpin who, over a period of 39 months, pushed Incognito to be one of the most prolific online narcotics distributors on the internet. This all warrants a serious and substantial sentence.”

During sentencing, District Judge Colleen McMahon told Lin that Incognito Market was “a business that made [him] a drug kingpin," and that this was the “most serious drug crime I have ever been confronted with in 27.5 years.”