Taipei prosecutors have seized assets worth more than NT$200 million (US$6.67 million) from a Taiwanese man who pleaded guilty in the US in December last year to charges related to operating a drug sales platform.
The Taipei District Prosecutors' Office has launched an investigation into Lin Rui-siang (林睿庠), seizing real estate and bank savings in Taiwan totaling more than NT$200 million, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday.
Earlier in the day, the Chinese-language Mirror Media also published a story detailing Lin’s case.
Photo: Taipei Times
The 24-year-old has been detained in New York since his arrest by FBI special agents at John F Kennedy International Airport while in transit on May 18 last year.
Lin was accused of owning and operating "Incognito Market," an online dark web narcotics marketplace that enabled its users to buy and sell illegal narcotics anonymously around the world, US authorities said in a news release in May last year.
"Incognito Market" was formed in October 2020 and closed in March last year after having sold more than US$100 million worth of narcotics, including hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamines, the statement said.
In exchange for listing and selling narcotics on the platform, narcotics suppliers paid a commission of 5 percent of their sales to Incognito Market, the US Department of Justice statement said.
In December last year, Lin pleaded guilty to three charges: narcotics conspiracy, which carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years and up to life in prison; money laundering, with a maximum sentence of 20 years; and conspiracy to sell adulterated and misbranded medication, which carries up to five years, according to a statement from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
When arrested, Lin was en route from Saint Lucia to Singapore, where he planned to enroll in a graduate program after completing his service at Taiwan’s Technical Mission in the Caribbean nation, a diplomatic ally of Taiwan, Mirror Media reported.
Lin, who specialized in information technology, was dispatched to Saint Lucia in November 2023 under Taiwan’s "substitute military service program," which allows conscripts to fulfill their national service obligations by assisting with Taiwan’s overseas technical and medical missions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
Mirror Media reported that, after pleading guilty, Lin identified four accomplices and revealed details about the digital financial flows involved.
As a result, the US court postponed his sentencing, originally scheduled in March, until September, the report said.
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