Founder of Incognito Market Sentenced to 30 Years over Crypto-Facilitated Drug Trade

A U.S. federal judge imposed a three-decade prison term on the individual who ran Incognito Market, concluding a case that tied a crypto-native online marketplace to extensive illegal drug distribution and money laundering. Prosecutors presented evidence that the marketplace used an on-site crypto ledger dubbed “Incognito Bank” to let buyers and sellers move value anonymously, and that the platform collected a transaction fee that monetized those trades. Court filings attribute more than $105 million in illegal sales to the operation and identify transactions spanning hundreds of thousands of crypto transfers and many hundreds of thousands of user accounts. The government linked the site’s listings to mass quantities of hard drugs — including large multi-hundred-kilogram shipments of stimulants and multiple kilograms of purported prescription pills — and to at least one fatal overdose. Sentencing also included a forfeiture order exceeding $105 million and a term of supervised release following imprisonment. Investigators documented the marketplace’s growth from launch through its closure, showing a vendor community in the low thousands and a buyer registry approaching half a million. When the operator shuttered the service, prosecutors say he seized significant user deposits and attempted to extort participants by threatening to expose transaction histories and crypto identifiers. The case arrived amid a sequence of DOJ actions against dark-web crypto services, signaling an intensified focus on tracing cryptocurrency flows and recovering criminal proceeds. Legal authorities emphasized how internal payment systems and mixers have been weaponized to conceal criminal revenue, prompting comparisons to prior forfeitures tied to major darknet infrastructure. Beyond the criminal penalties, the ruling demonstrates prosecutorial will to pursue both custodial sentences and large-scale asset recovery in complex digital-economy investigations. For crypto platforms, the case highlights operational features that attract regulatory and criminal scrutiny: custodial wallets, in-platform ledgers, and anonymity-enhancing tools. The sentencing is likely to influence vendor behavior on remaining illicit markets and inform compliance and risk calculations for crypto firms and custodial services. Law-enforcement success here may accelerate technical and legal efforts to map transaction chains, compel disclosures, and seize tainted digital assets in future cases.