Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations’ Kansas City field office, and the New York City Police Department. It’s hard to imagine anyone being audacious enough to take on hundreds of drug dealers at once, especially ones who ship large quantities of narcotics across the globe daily. After all, it’s an unregulated industry whereby big and small players alike are often forced to turn to violence to recoup debts and generally enforce their wishes.
Decoding Incognito Exit Scam
That extortion threat, combined with increased tracing and investigative pressure, led many users to flee the platform, dramatically reducing deposits and facilitating law enforcement’s final takedown. However, depending on how much Riu-Sian Lin knows about other accounts that could expose the criminal’s identity, we will see in the next period of time in the other law enforcement takedown and arrest operations. In the case of SuperMarket, users will likely migrate to other illegal communities due to a lack of trust in the platform.
Russian Darknet Market
The indictment alleges the illegal sale of more than $100 million in illicit narcotics and misbranded prescription drugs, including heroin, cocaine, LSD, MDMA, oxycodone, methamphetamines, ketamine, and alprazolam. In addition, in November 2023, an undercover law enforcement officer received several tablets purporting to be oxycodone purchased on the Incognito Market. Tests on these tablets revealed that they were not authentic oxycodone at all but were, in fact, fentanyl pills. The first charge – sometimes called the “kingpin statute” – carries a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison. Ross Ulbricht, the creator and operator of the now-shuttered Silk Road darknet drug marketplace, was found guilty of the same crime and sentenced to life in prison.
Darknetlive Sold To Incognito Market
It’s the first time in history that any darknet marketplace has attempted to blackmail all of its drug dealers at once. Incognito Market, once one of the most secure and reliable platforms on the dark web, was no more. Other darknet markets quickly took notice, with many administrators shutting down their operations in fear of being the next target. Users, too, began to migrate to smaller, more obscure markets, hoping to avoid the attention of law enforcement.
The infrastructure was quite robust and even included a fully functional banking system capable of storing and exchanging funds, and processing interest earnings. Lin also used funds from Incognito Market’s admin wallet to purchase at least four internet domains on Namecheap. One of the transactions cost approximately $20,000, paid for using the platform’s finances. The name registered to the Namecheap account was Rui-Siang Lin, again directly connecting him to the dark web marketplace.
Drug Market
It began by freezing their cryptocurrency funds, so they couldn’t withdraw their money. Then, the scammers threatened to share the private chat details that were supposed to be secret. Two new dark web services are marketing to cybercriminals who are curious to see how their various cryptocurrency holdings and transactions may be linked to known criminal activity. Dubbed “Antinalysis” and “AMLBot,” the services purport to offer a glimpse into how one’s payment activity might be flagged by law enforcement agencies and private companies that try to link suspicious cryptocurrency transactions to real people.
- Finally, despite his supposed expertise in cryptocurrency tracing and digital privacy, it was Lin’s own relatively sloppy money trails that, the DOJ claims, helped the FBI to trace his real identity.
- In an extraordinary twist, Lin had previously worked for Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he trained law enforcement officials on the very blockchain analytics techniques used to take down platforms like his own.
- In a LinkedIn post in April 2024, Lin shared some pictures from a “cybercrime and cryptocurrency training” at the Saint Lucia Police Academy.
- Additionally, the market staff imposed a full ban on all opiates and opioids (hydrocodone, oxycodone, heroin, etc), along with all other narcotics that fall under the deliriant class, not just fentenyl like many other darknet markets.
- This compares to $1.5 billion the previous year and $3.1 billion in 2021.
Samsara Darknet Market
His professors described him as a prodigy, someone who could solve complex problems with ease and elegance. Lin quickly became involved in various research projects, often working late into the night on coding challenges and cryptography puzzles. It was during this time that Lin first encountered the world of cryptocurrencies, a discovery that would change the course of his life forever.
Exit Scam & Extortion
Later, on May 22, ‘MommaBear’ returned with another post, indicating that the restoration process was ongoing and that he had not abandoned the community. However, there’s no mention of how they’re going to get their money back from ‘FatherBear’. In one instance, undercover agents posing as buyers uncovered a package, which they thought to be heroin. Upon further testing, the substance turned out to be fentanyl, a highly lethal synthetic opioid. Drug Enforcement Administration, a mere two milligrams of the substance can be fatal. In November 2023, the feds finally obtained a judicially authorized search warrant on Lin’s personal email account.
Price Of Black Market Drugs
- According to TRM Labs, Incognito launched in October 2020 and remained active until March 2024.
- Had this been a one-off event, you might just call it a coincidence, but he repeated this cash-out severally to draw suspicion.
- Incognito Market deals primarily in narcotics, so it’s likely many users are now worried about being outed as drug dealers.
- According to Robinson’s post, Bitcoins linked to darknet markets, was developed by the Incognito team, which also runs Incognito Market.
- Until that moment, Lin led a double life that astonished both law enforcement and the darknet community.
They threatened to leak the contents unless users paid a ransom commensurate with the volume of their transactions on the platform. On March 12, 2020, before Incognito Market launched, LIN emailed himself a rough diagram of a darknet marketplace. That diagram, which is pictured below, contains features consistent with the operation of Incognito Market. Security-conscious users develop systematic verification protocols for marketplace authenticity assurance. Those processes help guard against sophisticated phishing attacks targeted towards darknet marketplace users. The identity of the Incognito Market proprietor is not well known due to the anonymous nature of darknet operations.
This historic takedown, led by Europol, resulted in the highest number of seizures in JCODE’s history. He “was scheduled to go to Singapore via New York when he was arrested by the police in New York,” he said, adding that Taiwan was closely monitoring the case. He had applied to work as part of the embassy’s technical corps in lieu of military service — mandatory for Taiwanese men — and had “behaved normally.” It read, “Expecting to hear the last of us yet? We got one final little nasty surprise for y’all. We have accumulated a list of private messages, transaction info, and order details over the years.”
Diverse Range Of Products
The administrator has promised to keep users updated as more information becomes available and efforts continue to recover the lost funds. The arrest of Riu-Siang Lin, the former administrator of the closed Incognito marketplace, by the US authorities on 18th May is causing a domino effect in the underground illegal communities, leading to an alleged exit plan on the SuperMarket. On Dreads, the co-administrator of the Supermarket announced to the community on May 21, 2024, that the wallets had been emptied and that the only person who would have had access to them was “FatherBear”, the other administrator of the marketplace. Accusations intensified after Incognito Market released an official statement on the site confirming earlier suspicions. The announcement stated that operators had collated incriminating information about vendor identities, purchase details and private messages.
Administrators of such marketplaces use pseudonyms and secure operations to cover their identities. There is no confirmed information known regarding the actual persons or groups behind the platform. The website operates exclusively using the Tor network infrastructure, which requires specific browsers to access.
