Anonymous Market founder Rui-Xiang Lin has been sentenced to up to 30 years in a $105 million crypto drug operation.
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The darknet marketplace hosted 640,000 cryptocurrency transactions from more than 400,000 buyer accounts before the March 2024 exit scam.
Rui-Xiang, the 24-year-old founder of Taiwanese dark drug market Incognito Market, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for running a $105 million crypto-powered narcotics operation, the US Department of Justice announced Tuesday.
Key Takeaways:
– Lin got 30 years to run the incognito marketplace, which made $105 million in cryptocurrency drug transactions between 2020 and 2024.
– The platform used a proprietary crypto payment system called “Incognito Bank” to handle BTC and Monero transactions for over 400,000 buyers.
– The penalty comes as the DOJ continues to prioritize dark narcotics cases, despite disbanding some crypto enforcement units in 2025.
U.S. District Judge Colin McMahon, presiding over the Southern District of New York, called Lynn a “drug kingpin” and called the case the most serious drug crime she has faced in more than 27 years on the bench.
Lin pleaded guilty in December 2024 to charges including participating in a continuing criminal enterprise, drug conspiracy and money laundering. The court ordered the forfeiture of $105,045,109.67.
Operating under the name “Pharaoh”, Lin ran the marketplace from October 2020 to March 2024. He facilitated the sale of more than 1,000 kilograms each of cocaine and methamphetamine, along with hundreds of other controlled substances, including at least one overdose-related fentanyl-laced pill.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said: “Today's sentencing concerns traffickers: You can't hide in the shadows of the Internet. “The Internet, ‘decentralized,' ‘blockchain' — any technology — is not a license to operate a drug distribution business.
A proprietary crypto payment system enables anonymous drug sales on the underground market.
At the center of Incognito Market's operations was a custodian crypto wallet system called “Incognito Bank,” where users deposited BTC or Monero into accounts on the site, according to the DOJ. Transactions are processed internally between buyer and seller accounts, and the platform collects a 5% commission on each sale. According to details of the court decision, Lin pocketed more than $6 million in compensation.
In the year In March 2024, Lin shut down the marketplace for fraudulent withdrawals, stole at least $1 million in user deposits, and threatened to publish trading stories unless sellers paid extortion fees ranging from $100 to $20,000. The plan shows that the marketplace's promised encryption and message deletion features never worked — user data was preserved throughout the platform's operations.
According to court filings, investigators traced bitcoins from an undisclosed administrator's wallet to Lin's personal wallet, where they were converted to Monero and to a centralized exchange account registered in his name, which included his Taiwanese driver's license and personal details.
Lynn's operational security failures led to his arrest by JFK.
Despite running a sophisticated dark stage, Lin made critical mistakes that exposed his true identity. He registered domains to market anonymously using his real name, phone number, and physical address.
One domain purchase was partially paid for by linking 0.00501 BTC of identity documents to the crypto exchange account Lin directly with an anonymous admin wallet. He also maintains a GitHub account under his own name and a marketplace operation diagram in his personal Gmail.
In the year On May 18, 2024, he was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport on his way to Singapore. The investigation involves the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, DEA, FDA's Bureau of Criminal Investigation, NYPD and US Customs and Border Protection.
DEA Special Agent in Chief Frank A. Tarantino III said Lynn's practice of putting profits over public health was “reckless and dangerous but unconscionable.”
The sentencing comes at a time when the DOJ's crypto enforcement priorities are shifting
Lin's 30-year sentence is one of the harshest sentences for darknet marketplace operations. It is second only to the life sentence of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who was pardoned by President Trump in January 2025.
In April 2025, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a memo disbanding the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team and directing prosecutors to stop pursuing charges against exchanges, mingling and wallets for their end-user actions.
However, the memo focuses on terrorism and drug trafficking—categories that fit Lynn's character perfectly.
Meanwhile, the DOJ is continuing its darknet enforcement on other fronts, completing a $400 million settlement in January 2026 related to the Helix cryptocurrency mixer.
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