This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.
The tail end of 2024's first quarter is seeing fresh momentum in Bitcoin's price with the world's premier cryptocurrency setting new price records on the back of formidable tailwinds from favorable global regulatory developments. At the same time, another historic development in the crypto sphere might be on its way, as the controversy surrounding the darknet marketplace Incognito Market takes a fresh twist after its admin threatened users with leaking their transaction and messaging history. Incognito Market is reminiscent of the famed Silk Road marketplace that was shut down by law enforcement after record setting illicit activity, and today's report comes courtesy of Dark Web Informer on X/Twitter.
Incognito Market Admin Allegedly Asks Users To Pay To Avoid Leaks Of Messages, Transaction History, & Other Details
Incognito Market, which has been operational for more than a year, allowed its users to engage in a variety of illicit activities online while keeping their identity private. This includes sourcing drugs, hacking tools and other items. However, the platform and its users started facing trouble earlier this month in an indication of what appeared to be an exit scam.
An exit scam is one that sees an entity, such as a financial firm or a market place, allow users to deposit their funds and then stop being functional. This leaves the funds at the disposal of the owners of the platform, and Incognito Market users reported at the tail end of last week that they were unable to access their funds.
Dark Web Informer confirmed the reports and users on the social media network Reddit also pitched in and explained that their transactions were not following through. A message from the Market's admin shared by the Informer saw them claim that changes to withdrawal systems were responsible for the transaction and other errors.
However, a later post from a dark web researcher stressed that they were offered a bribe to stop posting about Incognito Market, and after users continued to face transaction problems despite the Pharaoh's assurance, word started to spread around that an exit scam was in play.
Now, the Informer is back with a fresh message from Pharaoh, and by the looks of it, people who had used Incognito Market might be in trouble. The latest message sees the admin threaten former users of the dark web market by intending to leak their transactions and other histories unless they white list themselves by April 1st.
The message reads:
Expecting to hear the last of us yet?
We got one final little nasty surprise for y'all.
We have accumulated a list of private messages, transaction info and order details over the years. You'll be surprised at the number of people that relied on our "auto-encrypt" functionality. And by the way, your messages and transaction IDs were never actually deleted after the "expiry". . .
SURPRISE SURPRISE !!!
Anyway, if anything were to leak to law enforcement, I guess nobody never slipped up. We'll be publishing the entire dump of 557k orders and 862l crypto transaction IDs at the end of May, whether or not you and your customers' info is on that list is totally up to you. And yes . .
YES, THIS IS AN EXTORTION !!!
As for the buyers, we'll be opening up a whitelist portal for them to remove their records as well in a few weeks.
Thank you all for doing business with Incognito Market
The message adds that prices will double on April 1st, when users will also be able to get their names whitelisted.
About the author: Ramish is a seasoned technology writer and editor with more than a decade of experience. He specializes in semiconductor fabrication and market analysis. With a background in finance and supply chain management - via his bachelors in Finance and a micromasters in supply chain management from MIT - Ramish combines financial rigor with deep industry insight to deliver accurate and authoritative coverage.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
