Sardine breaks down token scams: the fastest growing AI fraud vector
astrange · x · 2026-09-29
Fraud-fighting company Sardine's engineers explain token scams — the fastest growing fraud vector, where criminal operations abuse and resell AI platform credits.
Key points covered:
- Free trial abuse at scale
- Account farms registering thousands of fake users
- Reselling stolen AI credits on gray markets
- Distillation attacks using stolen compute
- Why ID checks and selfies don't stop it
- Why payment-stage fraud tools often miss token abuse
- The signals that still work when fraudsters rotate accounts, and how to stop scams before they start
The author calls it a hugely impactful new fraud surface and promises deeper dives on several topics in the coming days.
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