Clearly, we can’t trust anyone. The black market Incognito Market has just revisited the traditional “Exit scam”, the exit scam – this way for the administrator of a black market to suddenly lower the curtain by leaving with the funds deposited as security.
At the beginning of March, Internet users warned of the closure of the illegal store. Suspicions confirmed a few days later. But Incognito Market administrators don’t just scam black market users. They are now trying to ransom them. In a message shared on social networks, they threaten to transmit their data to the police if a ransom is not paid.
From $100 to $20,000
“We have accumulated a list of private messages, transaction information and order details over the years,” they explain, wryly, with a certain sense of humor. You’ll be surprised how many people have relied on our ‘auto-encryption’ feature.” And to specify that it has a file of 557,000 orders and 862,000 crypto transactions.
“Yes, it’s extortion!”, they add for those who don’t understand. As journalist Brian Krebs reports, the ransoms demanded range from $100 to $20,000, depending on the profile of the buyer and seller. Amounts which must double on April 1st.
“All scams”
Little publicized, Incognito Market was visibly focused on drug trafficking. The name of this black market was, for example, cited by Wired two years ago in the margins of an article about the return of the illegal AlphaBay marketplace. But to clarify that it only had a few hundred to thousands of ads.
Adventures that made Brett Johnson smile on LinkedIn, the administrator of a precursor of this type of black market in the early 2000s. “The truth about darknet markets? These are all exit scams. The only question is whether law enforcement can shut down the market and arrest its operators before the exit scam takes place.”