Empire Market sentenced: Raheim Hamilton got 40 years, and the Justice Department never called it an exit scam
Empire Market's co-creator was sentenced on a Monday in October 2026. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois, in a release dated Wednesday 7 October 2026, said U.S. District Judge Steven C. Seeger in Chicago had that Monday given Raheim Hamilton, 30, of Suffolk, Virginia, 40 years in federal prison and a $5 million fine. The Suffolk News-Herald, on 12 October, dates that Monday as 5 October. Hamilton had pleaded guilty earlier in 2026 to a drug conspiracy charge. The release covers the sentence, not how the market vanished in 2020.
What the Justice Department says Empire was
The Empire Market dark web case, in the Justice Department's account, is a marketplace Hamilton co-owned. He operated it with Thomas Pavey from 2018 to 2020. In that time the site facilitated more than four million transactions, valued at more than $430 million. Net drug sales were nearly $375 million. The release lists, as "approximately at least," 13,314.23 grams of fentanyl, 446,683.15 grams of cocaine, 71,992.33 grams of methamphetamine and 103,396.21 grams of heroin. Other goods named in the same paragraph: stolen account credentials, stolen personal information, counterfeit currency, and hacking tools. Drugs were "the most prevalent activity."
Hamilton and Pavey required cryptocurrency, encouraged tumbling and mixing, encouraged encryption, and let users rate vendors on how well they concealed what they shipped. That is the design the government described, and the release stops there: no launch day, nothing on what happened in August 2020.
Raheim Hamilton's sentence is 40 years on that one drug-conspiracy count, plus the fine. He agreed to forfeit about 1,230 bitcoin, 24.4 ether, and three properties in Virginia. The fine and the forfeiture are separate sentences in the release. The release does not price the coins.
The larger headcount is the plea agreement, via a local paper
User counts and a $432.9 million sales figure are not in the Justice Department release. They are in the Suffolk News-Herald, attributed to Hamilton's plea agreement. Keep them in that column.
| Figure | Justice Department release, 7 October 2026 | Suffolk News-Herald, 12 October 2026, citing the plea agreement |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions | More than four million | More than 4 million |
| Value | More than $430 million | About $432.9 million in net sales |
| Drug sales | Nearly $375 million | About $374 million |
| Users, buyers, vendors | Not stated | About 1.68 million registered users, nearly 360,000 buyers, about 5,000 vendors, "by August 2020" |
| When it ran | 2018 to 2020 | 2018 until August 2020 |
| Guilty plea | Earlier this year | January, to a federal drug conspiracy charge |
The Herald also says Hamilton admitted selling counterfeit currency on AlphaBay in 2016 and 2017 under the name ZeroAngel, and that he and Pavey later used AlphaBay as a model. That name is not in the 7 October release. The Record, on 9 October, reports a different AlphaBay detail and attributes it to the indictment and to prosecutors: the two sold counterfeit currency on AlphaBay, and after that site was shut in 2017 they started Empire on 1 February 2018. The Record is not the plea agreement, and the October release is not the indictment. Three documents, three levels of detail. The sentence itself does not depend on ZeroAngel.
The Herald prices the forfeited bitcoin at about $103 million and the ether at about $60,000, names a Suffolk property on Shoulders Hill Road and two in Norfolk, and says computers and phones were seized. The Record's version of the same coins is "more than $100 million worth of bitcoin." Neither dollar figure is in the Justice Department release. The Herald adds that the charge carried 10 years to life, and that the plea's guideline calculation was life, which did not bind the judge. Forty years is what the judge gave.
Thomas Pavey sentencing is still ahead
Thomas Pavey, 41, of Ormond Beach, Florida, pleaded guilty last year to a federal drug conspiracy charge. The Herald says that plea was in 2025. He agreed to forfeit about 1,584 bitcoin, two boxes of 25-ounce gold bars, three automobiles and two Florida properties, and he was set to be sentenced by Judge Seeger later in October. The 7 October release says "later this month." The Herald on 12 October still says later this month. None of these pages reports a date, or a sentence, for him. Until a later release does, he is the co-creator who has admitted the conspiracy and is waiting.
Was the 2020 shutdown an exit scam?
The Justice Department does not say. The 2026 release ends the story at "2018 to 2020." It does not say the operators stole deposits, does not say the police seized the servers, and does not use the words exit scam.
What existed in August 2020 was a disagreement, reported at the time. CoinDesk, on 26 August 2020, said Empire had been taken offline on 22 August and had been down more than three days. John Marsh of Darknetstats told the reporter the fear was that administrators had left with an estimated 2,638 bitcoin, about $30.2 million, and Marsh said that figure was not certain because no large movements had been identified. He called it an "unplanned exit scam," because withdrawals had worked until the day the site went offline. Another person CoinDesk quoted, Se7en, said it did not look like an exit scam, because those usually freeze withdrawals and keep taking money for weeks, and raised a denial-of-service attack as another theory. Marsh told CoinDesk the site had been extorted for $10,000 to $15,000 a week to stay up. CoinDesk's own deck called it fears of an exit scam, not a finding.
Six years later the retellings picked a side and dropped the argument. Decrypt, on 9 October 2026, wrote that the site "went offline in August 2020 in what users believed was a $30 million exit scam," and attributed the market's rise to TRM Labs, not to the court. The Record the same week stated, as fact, that operators stole an estimated $30 million in bitcoin "in the summer of 2020." Neither sentence is in the judgment the Justice Department announced. An exit scam, when a court describes one, is the operator taking the escrow. Wall Street Market's release uses those words. Empire's does not. The history of darknet markets keeps the two apart: the EU drugs agency's exit-scam label on one side, and on the other the Justice Department's dates, 2018 to 2020, with no word on how it closed.
How 40 years compares with Incognito and Silk Road
The closest recent comparison is Incognito Market, sentenced eight months earlier by a different court, for a smaller drug total and a shutdown the government did describe as theft.
| Empire, Northern District of Illinois | Incognito, Southern District of New York | |
|---|---|---|
| Who | Raheim Hamilton, co-creator | Rui-Siang Lin, 24, of Taiwan, who used the name Pharaoh |
| When | Monday before the 7 October 2026 release. The Herald says 5 October. | 3 February 2026, the day of that release. He had pleaded guilty on 16 December 2024. |
| Prison | 40 years, and a $5 million fine | 30 years, plus five years of supervised release |
| Scale in the release | More than $430 million in transactions, nearly $375 million of it drugs | More than $105 million in drug sales. Buyer accounts, vendors and transaction counts are in the history of darknet markets, from the same release. |
| Forfeiture | About 1,230 bitcoin, 24.4 ether, three Virginia properties | $105,045,109.67 |
| How the government says it ended | Not said. The dates are 2018 to 2020. | In March 2024 Lin closed the market by stealing at least $1 million on deposit, then demanded payment not to publish users' histories. The release quotes him: "YES, THIS IS AN EXTORTION!!!" It does not use the words exit scam either. |
The older benchmark is Silk Road: Ross Ulbricht got life on 29 May 2015, after a jury found him guilty on seven counts, for a site that handled more than $200 million in sales between 2011 and 2013. Hamilton pleaded guilty to one conspiracy count and got 40 years on more than twice that sales figure. A trial conviction on seven counts and a plea to one are different cases, so the gap between life and 40 years is not a measure of how the courts have changed.
Forty years is the longer prison term of the two 2026 sentences. Incognito is the case where the release describes theft and extortion, and prices the forfeiture in dollars. Empire is the case where the drug total in the release is larger and the ending is still the argument CoinDesk printed in 2020. Pavey's hearing is the next document. It had not been reported as of 22 October 2026. How the other big markets ended is in the history of darknet markets; other recent stories are on the news page.
