An Inside Look at the Token Reseller Market

← Home / All posts threat-research llm-security An Inside Look at the Relay Market Powering Token Resellers and Fraud June 28, 2026 · Matt Lenhard · 9 min read Share

My Story

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about token fraud, a problem I first stumbled upon while working as a software engineer on an AI gateway.

We faced constant abuse. At first it was free-credit abuse, where users spun up accounts en masse. Then it was our support chatbot. I started talking to friends about it and hearing stories of companies losing millions of dollars to abuse each day.

The abuse took a number of different shapes, and the abusers were relentless. I came to realize that the problem was much bigger than us. A new form of fraud had emerged, and it had become endemic to the token economy.

While researching where the abuse was coming from, I stumbled onto a Chinese forum where operators openly discussed the relays and their methods. My notes on the industry and its players are below.

So What Is a Relay?

A relay — or “transfer station” — is essentially a service that proxies traffic to U.S. models, often at a deep discount. For example, one operator’s price-comparison site listed a package that bought the equivalent of $3,333 worth of official Anthropic credit for 425 RMB — roughly $0.13 of usage per $1 spent.

Effective rate $0.13 of official usage per $1 spent Sample package $3,333 of Anthropic credit for just 425 RMB Top discount 97.8% off official pricing, at the cheapest relay

To make that concrete, here’s how far below official pricing the relays we track actually run, ranked by discount:

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