Incognito Market Administrator aka Pharoah, Arrested
On 18th May 2024, Lin Rui-siang, AKA pharoah, the alleged administrator of Incognito Market, was arrested at John F. Kennedy Airport. He appeared at Manhattan federal court later that day. Lin was scheduled to go to Singapore via New York, when he was arrested by the police in New York. The arrest was part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) operation. If convicted, Lin faces: A mandatory minimum penalty of life in prison for engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise. A maximum penalty of life in prison for narcotics conspiracy. A maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for money laundering. A maximum penalty of five years in prison for conspiracy to sell adulterated and misbranded medication.
Lin’s choice to extort vendors and buyers was mentioned in the indictment: The defendant’s greed and disregard for others was further demonstrated by his alleged extortion attempt during the platform’s final days.
Lin regularly posted on Twitter and was very vocal about his support of Monero. His blog showcased the Monero and Tor nodes he hosted, along with his NFT collection. Lin had been working since November at Taiwan’s embassy in St Lucia, an eastern Caribbean nation that is one of the Asian island’s few allies. He had applied to work as part of the embassy’s technical corps in lieu of military service, mandatory for Taiwanese men. Expected to be discharged in July, Lin applied for leave and left St Lucia on 18th May. 3 months before he was arrested, he gave a presentation titled “Cyber Crime and Cryptocurrency” to a room full of St. Lucia police: Lin’s presentation 2 months before he was arrested, Lin tweeted: Looks like @krakenfx is finally clamping down on Monero, received this email asking me to provide bank statements and source of funds after XMR deposit to Kraken. Traded large volume there for some time now, never had this issue before. I did advanced KYC and have OTC rights… 1 week before he was arrested, he posted on LinkedIn that he had become a certified user of Reactor, the crypto tracing tool sold by blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis. “I’m excited to share that I’ve completed Chainalysis’s new qualification: Chainalysis Reactor Certification (CRC)!” Lin wrote in Mandarin. Lin’s last Twitter post shows a Chainalysis diagram of money flows between darknet markets and cryptocurrency exchanges. His market, Incognito, is shown in the diagram. Lin’s last tweet One of Lin’s last posts on Dread, after announcing Incognito’s extortion and exit scam: Lin’s addresses the Dread users trying to dox him
Court document :-complaint
