Token Reseller Market Facilitates AI Model Fraud with Deep Discounts

The Rise of Token Reseller Fraud

A new form of fraud has emerged within the token economy, where services known as "relays" or "transfer stations" facilitate discounted access to AI models. This system allows users to obtain AI model credits at prices significantly below official rates, with some relays offering discounts as high as 97.8%.

How Relays Operate

Relays function by proxying traffic to US-based AI models. For example, one operator's site listed a package equivalent to $3,333 worth of official Anthropic credit for 425 RMB, which translates to approximately $0.13 of usage per dollar spent. This deep discounting is a core characteristic of the reseller market.

The Four-Layer Ecosystem

The token reseller market is structured in four distinct layers. It begins with card and account merchants who supply virtual credit cards designed to bypass billing checks and bulk-registered accounts. These are then utilized by account pools, which aggregate numerous upstream accounts, manage tokens, and handle rate limits. Relays then wrap these pooled APIs into a product, competing on price, before finally reaching developers, startups, and SaaS companies seeking cheap inference, as well as commercial buyers for model distillation.

Upstream and Midstream Components

At the top of this ecosystem are the card merchants (卡商) and account merchants (号商), who specialize in selling virtual credit cards that pass US and European billing checks, alongside bulk-registered accounts. In the middle are the account pools (账号池), which consolidate dozens or hundreds of these upstream accounts, managing their authentication and access to AI services.