Account farms, involving the creation of fake, synthetic, or stolen online profiles, now sell consumer and business accounts through standalone websites—priced and packaged like a product. Resistant AI's threat intelligence team found more than 100 standalone sites and over 50 Telegram channels advertising access to platforms ranging from banking apps to crypto exchanges. Product listings ran into the hundreds of thousands, affecting more than 3k institutions with an average listing price of about $344.

To bypass Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) checks, these packages often include supporting paperwork like proof of address or income. Sellers use methods ranging from willing money mules reselling verified data to template farms selling ready-to-edit official layouts. In some cases, tools allow sellers to swap faces on selfies using deepfakes to bypass motion checks.

Institutions often overemphasize the importance of identity documents, while proof of address and income are reviewed less rigorously. To combat this, companies must look for patterns like 'erial fraud'—using the same document across multiple applications—and utilize AI-powered tools for document fraud detection and transaction monitoring.