Banananomics: Founder of Insanely Big Narcotic Marketplace Arrested

Founder of Insanely Big Narcotic Marketplace Arrested

Federal authorities have arrested a 23-year-old Taiwanese national for running an online market that sold $100 million worth of illicit narcotics, including fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, LSD, and ketamine.

Inputs that matter: The authorities said that for almost four years, Rui-Siang Lin operated and owned the Incognito Market, an online marketplace on the dark web that users worldwide visited to buy and sell illegal narcotics.

• It opened in October 2020 and, as KrebsOnSecurity reported, closed last March when its operators extorted buyers and sellers of fees ranging from $100 to $2,000 in exchange for not revealing text messages and transaction records showing their participation in the marketplace.

• In the 41 months that Incognito Market was open, it facilitated the sale of more than $100 million of narcotics.

• By June 2023, the site generated sales of $5 million per month.

The opportunity: The platform accepted Bitcoin or the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero for drug transactions, taking a fee of 5% from purchases.

• Incognito Market enabled the sale of 364 kilograms of cocaine, 295 kilograms of methamphetamine, and 92 kilograms of MDMA and other drugs, taking a fee of 5% of the narcotic's purchase price.

Zoom in: To facilitate the marketplace, the site established its own bank, which allowed users to deposit cryptocurrency into their accounts.

• Once a transaction occurred, funds were transferred from a buyer's account into the seller's, minus a 5 percent fee collected by Incognito Market.

• The arrangement allowed buyers and sellers to remain anonymous to one another.

Between the lines: Throughout its history, Incognito generated sales of $83.6 million, which earned Lin and his associates roughly $4.2 million from commission and admission fees.

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The Truth About Zombie Mortgages And Foreclosures

Before the 2008 financial crisis, housing prices and the mortgage bond market continued to rise.

Inputs that matter: ATTOM, a leading curator of land, property, and real estate data, recently released its fourth-quarter 2023 Vacant Property and Zombie Foreclosure Report, showing that 1.3 million (1,294,505) residential properties in the United States are vacant.

• The report also reveals that 320,765 residential properties in the U.S. are in foreclosure in the fourth quarter of this year, up 1.7 percent from the third quarter of 2023 and up 12.8 percent from the fourth quarter of 2022.

• Among those pre-foreclosure properties, about 8,900 sit vacant as zombie foreclosures (pre-foreclosure properties abandoned by owners) in the fourth quarter of 2023.

The opportunity: “The ongoing strength of the U.S. housing market continues to benefit neighborhoods around the country in so many ways, with the near-total lack of zombie foreclosures standing out as one striking example,” said Rob Barber, CEO of ATTOM.

• “Rising equity flowing from rising home values has not only kept foreclosure cases from spiking since the moratorium was lifted.” 

• “It also keeps giving delinquent homeowners a valuable resource they can use to either stave off eviction or sell their homes and move on.” 

• “As a result, we continue to see none of the widespread abandonment that followed the housing market crash after the Great Recession of the late 2000s.”

Zoom in: In the fourth quarter of 2023, 8,903 residential properties facing possible foreclosure were vacated by their owners nationwide, up from 8,782 in the third quarter of 2023 and 7,722 in the fourth quarter of 2022.

• “U.S. single-family rent growth strengthened overall in March, though some weaknesses are revealed in the latest numbers,” Molly Boesel, principal economist for CoreLogic, said in a statement. “Overbuilt areas, such as Austin, Texas, continued to soften, decreasing by 3.5% annually in March.”

• “For the first time in 14 years, single-family, attached properties posted a year-over-year decline,” Boesel added. “The continued strength in single-family detached rents indicates that potential homebuyers priced out of the home-purchase market are choosing to rent similar alternatives.”

Between the lines: Secondary mortgages are significantly smaller than the primary mortgage used to buy a house as they usually cover the down payment (10% to 20% of the home’s value).

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