The message explains that Incognito is now effectively blackmailing former users, stating that messages and transaction records were stored, and adding that it will create a “whitelist portal” where users can pay fees. (Some dealers will do this later) will set an amount of up to $20,000 to have the data removed before all adverse information is leaked online later this month. The message added: “Yes, this is extortion!!!”
In retrospect, Ormsby says, the site's user-friendly appearance and security features may have been years of fraud, perhaps laying the groundwork for its ultimate goal. It's a type of extortion from users never seen before in the dark web drug market. “Perhaps the whole thing was designed to instill a false sense of security,” Ormsby said. “Extortion is completely new to me, but I think once you make people feel safe, it becomes easier.”
Incognito Markets has promised to divulge more than 500,000 total drug transaction records unless buyers and sellers pay to have them removed from the data dump. It is not yet clear whether Lin, the market manager who allegedly personally carried out the extortion campaign, intended to carry out the threat, according to prosecutors. It appears that Lin was arrested before the deadline set for Incognito blackmail victims.
Expert in anti-money laundering
While Lin was preparing for this betrayal, he also appeared to be briefly plotting an entirely different scheme, according to the FBI. In the summer of 2021, during Incognito Market's first year of relative quiet, Lin's alleged alter-ego, Pharoah, launched a service called Antinalysis, a website that analyzes blockchain and allows users to check, for a fee, whether their cryptocurrency is linked to criminal transactions.
In a post on the dark web market forum Dread, Pharaoh clarified that Antinalysis is not designed to assist anti-money laundering investigators, but rather to assist those seeking to evade investigation (including, presumably, users of his own dark web market). “Our goal is not to support surveillance dictatorship by state-sponsored agencies,” Pharaoh's post read. “The service is specifically for individuals who need to have complete privacy on the blockchain, providing a perspective from the other side's perspective so that users can understand how their funds could be held against them in a dictatorial illegal investigation.”
After independent cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs wrote an article in August 2021 describing the company's service as “an anti-money laundering service for fraudsters,” Pharaoh said that Antinalysys had identified Krebs as an “anti-money laundering service for fraudsters.” posted another message complaining that they had lost access to the blockchain data source they used. It is said that it will function as the anti-money laundering tool AMLBot and will be offline. “Stay informed and fuck LE,” Pharaoh wrote, using the abbreviation LE, which means “law enforcement agency.” But Antinaracy eventually returned, pivoting last year to instead function as a service that exchanges Bitcoin for Monero and vice versa.
Meanwhile, Lin appears to maintain his obsession with cryptocurrency tracking and blockchain analysis. In his final LinkedIn post last week before his arrest in New York, Lin announced that he had become a certified user of Reactor, a cryptocurrency tracking tool sold by blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis. “I'm excited to share that I've completed Chainalysis' new credential, Chainalysis Reactor Certified (CRC)!” Lin wrote in Mandarin. His final LinkedIn post showed a diagram from Chaina Analysis showing the flow of funds between dark web markets and cryptocurrency exchanges.
