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The “Incognito Market” created by Rui-Siang Lin enabled its users to anonymously buy and sell drugs around the globe for nearly 3½ years, US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and other federal officials announced on Monday, May 20.
Lin -- also known as Ruisiang Lin, 林睿庠, Pharoah, and faro – mastermineded a clandestine e-commerce network where buyers could browse thousands of listings for heroin, LSD, Ecstasy, Oxy, Ketamine, Xanax and more, they said.
Dealers who slung their product by the hundreds of kilos not only had to fork over an admission fee -- Lin also got 5% of every sale, the Justice Department said in a release.
The money moved in either direction through a cryptocurrency web “bank,” it said.
Lin oversaw the entire multi-million dollar operation from its inception in October 2020, “including its employees, vendors, and customers, and had ultimate decision-making authority over every aspect,” according to the DOJ release.
"Under the promise of anonymity [Lin] offered the purchase of lethal drugs and fraudulent prescription medication on a global scale," Assistant New York FBI Assistant Director James Smith added.
Visitors to ”Incognito Market” were met by a splash page, graphics and a prompt for logging in with a unique username and password.
Vendors didn’t always label their goods accurately, federal authorities noted. Tests showed that one undercover agent who bought what was billed as oxycodone actually got pills containing fentanyl, they said.
Lin shut the site in March, but not before federal authorities had what they needed.
They arrested him at the airport in Queens on Saturday, although they didn't say whether he was headed to or from a flight.
A judge in the U.S. Southern District for New York in Manhattan subsequently ordered that Lin remain held Monday pending trial on charges of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, drug conspiracy, money laundering and conspiring to sell adulterated and misbranded medication.
“The long arm of the law extends to the dark web,” said Garland, the U.S. attorney general, “and we will bring to justice those who try to hide their crimes there.”
The FBI, HSI, DEA, FDA-OCI, and NYPD worked jointly on the case, which is being prosecuted by Southern District of New York Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ryan B. Finkel and Nicholas Chiuchiolo.
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