A New York court yesterday sentenced a Taiwanese man to 30 years in prison for conspiring to distribute narcotics, money laundering and conspiring to sell adulterated and misbranded medication.
Taiwanese national Lin Rui-siang (林睿庠) was arrested in May 2024 for operating an online narcotics marketplace, called “Incognito Market,” the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton said in a news release yesterday.
Before Lin’s platform was shut down in March 2024, he had sold more than about 1 tonne of drugs on underground markets, Clayton said.
Photo courtesy of the US Department of Justice’s Office of Public Affairs
Lin pled guilty to the crimes on Dec. 16, 2024, before US District Judge Colleen McMahon, who requested a heavy sentence.
While Lin was in the US, he sold US$105 million worth of drugs to online customers, making him “one of the world’s most prolific drug traffickers,” Clayton said.
Lin made millions of US dollars in profits, caused at least one death and exacerbated the opioid crisis, the attorney said.
Lin’s sentence sends a clear message to drug traffickers that “the Internet, ‘decentralization,’ ‘blockchain’ — any technology — is not a license to operate a narcotics distribution business,” he said.
Lin operated the Incognito Market under the online pseudonym “Pharaoh,” supervised its operations and “had ultimate decision-making authority over every aspect of the multimillion-dollar operation,” the court said in its statement.
Lin was a founding member of the market in October 2020 and led the site from January 2022 until he closed it in March 2024, the court said.
He ran the site while based in Saint Lucia and even led a four-day training for Saint Lucian police officers about online crime and cryptocurrency, which he wrote about on his personal Facebook page, it said.
Under Lin’s leadership, the Incognito Market customer base grew to more than 400,000 people, who were served by more than 1,800 narcotics “vendors,” facilitating more than 640,000 narcotics transactions, it said.
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 missions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said previously.
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office opened a separate investigation into alleged money laundering by Lin, seizing real estate and bank savings in Taiwan totaling more than NT$200 million (US$6.33 million) in May last year.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
A Taiwanese man apologized on Friday after saying in a social media post that he worked with Australia to provide scouting reports on Taiwan’s team, enabling Australia’s victory in this year’s World Baseball Classic (WBC), saying it was a joke and that he did not hold any position with foreign teams or Taiwan’s sports training center. Chen Po-hao (陳柏豪) drew the rage of many Taiwan baseball fans when he posted online on Thursday night, claiming credit for Australia’s 3-0 win over Taiwan in the opening game for Pool C, saying he worked as a physical therapist with the national team and
RSS