23-year-old man accused of running $100 million online narcotics marketplace

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Federal authorities have arrested a 23-year-old Taiwanese national and charged him with running an online market that sold $100 million worth of illicit narcotics, including fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, LSD, and ketamine.

The authorities said that for almost four years, Rui-Siang Lin operated and owned the Incognito Market, an online marketplace on the dark web that users worldwide visited to buy and sell illegal narcotics. The marketplace facilitated transactions with many of the same features provided by legitimate e-commerce sites, including buyer and user registration, branding, advertising, and customer service. When registered buyers visited the site using the Tor browser, they were presented with the following graphic:

(credit: Justice Department)

The site allowed buyers to search through thousands of listings for narcotics of their choice. It opened in October 2020 and, as reported by KrebsOnSecurity, closed last March when its operators extorted both buyers and sellers of fees ranging from $100 to $2,000 in exchange for not revealing text messages and transaction records showing their participation in the marketplace. In the 41 months that Incognito Market was open, it facilitated the sale of more than $100 million of narcotics. By June 2023, the site was generating sales of $5 million per month.