Incognito Market

**Incognito Market: A Darknet Marketplace’s Descent into Extortion**

In a brazen move that echoes tactics employed by ransomware syndicates, the darknet narcotics marketplace Incognito Market has initiated an extortion campaign against its own users. This shocking development comes on the heels of an alleged “exit scam” by Incognito administrators, which left users unable to withdraw millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency from the platform.

Visitors to the Incognito Market homepage are now greeted with a blackmail message from the site’s operators, threatening to publish sensitive purchase records of vendors who refuse to pay a ransom ranging from $100 to $20,000. The message ominously warns, “We got one final little nasty surprise for y’all,” and details the operators’ intention to release transaction data accumulated over years, exposing the personal messages, transaction info, and order details of its users.

Incognito Market claims it will publicly dump 557,000 orders and 862,000 cryptocurrency transaction IDs at the end of May unless vendors comply with their demands. The extortion message boldly admits, “Yes, this is an extortion!!!!”

To increase pressure on users, Incognito’s homepage now features a “Payment Status” page, listing top vendors and indicating which ones have already paid to keep their records confidential. This tactic further escalates the sense of urgency and fear among users, many of whom deal in illegal narcotics and are understandably concerned about potential exposure to law enforcement.

The mass extortion follows reports of users being unable to withdraw funds from their accounts, a situation initially obfuscated by Incognito administrators who falsely attributed the issues to system changes. The cryptocurrency-focused publication CoinTelegraph highlighted these withdrawal problems on March 6, accusing Incognito Market of exit-scamming its users out of their Bitcoin and Monero deposits.

Incognito Market, which primarily deals in narcotics, has exacerbated fears among its user base. New users are confronted with blatant advertisements for drugs, such as 5 grams of heroin for $450, underscoring the illicit nature of the marketplace.

The extortion scheme employed by Incognito Market bears a resemblance to the double extortion techniques used by modern ransomware groups, where victims are coerced into paying two ransoms: one for a decryption key and another to prevent the publication of stolen data.

Experts note that such exit scams are a common fate for darknet markets. Brett Johnson, a reformed cybercriminal who once ran the organized cybercrime community Shadowcrew, commented on the inevitability of these scams. “The Truth of Darknet Markets? ALL of them are Exit Scams. The only question is whether law enforcement can shut down the market and arrest its operators before the exit scam takes place,” Johnson stated.

Incognito Market’s fall from a trusted darknet marketplace to a perpetrator of mass extortion serves as a stark reminder of the inherent risks in engaging with these illicit platforms.