A 23-year-old man from Taiwan has been arrested on charges of selling at least $100 million worth of illegal drugs online through a dark web site known as the “Incognito Market”.
Rui-Siang Lin, also known as “Pharoah,” was arrested Saturday at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport and was scheduled to appear in court on Monday, the Justice Department said, calling him “one of Internet's Largest Illegal Narcotics Markets.”
“As alleged, Rui-Siang Lin was the architect of Incognito, a $100 million dark web scheme to traffic deadly drugs into the United States and around the world,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement.
Incognito Market, which was shut down in March, was a dark online marketplace that allowed users to buy and sell illegal drugs anonymously, according to the Justice Department.
Hundreds of pounds of cocaine, methamphetamines and other drugs were sold incognito since their launch in October 2020, he said.
“Under the promise of anonymity, Lin's alleged operation offered the purchase of lethal drugs and fraudulent prescription drugs on a global scale,” said James Smith, deputy director of the FBI's New York office.
Incognito Market users were able to search thousands of lists of illegal narcotics, including heroin, cocaine, LSD, MDMA, oxycodone, methamphetamines, ketamine and alprazolam.
The incognito marketplace included “many features of legitimate e-commerce sites, including branding, advertising and customer service,” the Justice Department said. The indictment includes several images of the site, including its homepage.
Department of Justice
Sellers paid five percent of the purchase price of each sale to “Incognito Market,” providing Lin with millions of dollars in profits, the Justice Department said.
Lin faces up to life in prison if convicted of the narcotics conspiracy.
Taipei's foreign ministry spokesman Jeff Liu said during a regular briefing Tuesday that Lin had been working since November at the Taiwanese embassy in Saint Lucia, an eastern Caribbean nation that is one of the country's few allies. the Asian island.
He had applied to work as part of the embassy's technical staff instead of military service — mandatory for Taiwanese men — and had “behaved normally.”
Liu said he was expected to be discharged in July, Lin applied for leave and left St. Lucia on May 18.
“He was scheduled to go to Singapore via New York when he was arrested by police in New York,” he said, adding that Taiwan was closely monitoring the case.
“This arrest underscores the ongoing and dedicated efforts of law enforcement to identify and dismantle the illicit drug networks that operate from every dark corner of the market,” said NYPD Commissioner Edward A Caban in a statement.
