China's Underground Claude API Cartel Reaches Massive Scale

An underground market of "token resellers" has emerged in China to bypass Anthropic’s ban, selling Claude API access for less than half the official price. Thousands to tens of thousands of these brokers are currently operating in China, funding their operations with stolen credit cards and the USDT stablecoin. Chinese tech firms are establishing paper companies in the US, Middle East, and Southeast Asia to sign enterprise agreements with Anthropic and Amazon Web Services. The illegally obtained access is reportedly being used by companies like Moonshot AI and DeepSeek for distillation training to rapidly improve their own AI models. "It’s a game of hide-and-seek between those trying to block accounts and those trying to use them without authorization." — Tech industry source