A thread on r/VALORANT last week showed a screenshot of a Discord seller offering 11,000 VP for $35, about a quarter of what Riot charges direct. The buyer paid, got the VP credited within an hour, and got hit with a perma ban two weeks later when the chargeback rolled in. He posted the ticket reply from Riot Support. It was a generic "your account has been associated with fraudulent purchases" template.
This is the cheap Valorant Points scam, and it has been running on Discord, Telegram, and a handful of marketplace sites for over a year. The seller is not finding some loophole or a regional pricing trick. They are buying VP with a stolen credit card and selling it to you before the real cardholder files a dispute. When that dispute lands, your account is the one left holding the bag.
How does the cheap Valorant Points scam actually work?
The seller advertises VP at 40 to 70 percent off retail. Common pitches you will see in trading Discords:
11,000 VP for $35-$45 (retail: $99.99)
5,000 VP for $18-$22 (retail: $49.99)
21,000 VP "bundle" packages for $60-$80
The seller asks for your Riot username and password, or sometimes just your in-game ID if they claim to use a "merchant gateway." They log in, run a top-up using a card number from a fraud forum, and the VP shows up in your account within minutes.
Banks take 30 to 90 days to process chargebacks. During that window, the VP sits in your account and you spend it on skins. When the real cardholder reports the charge as fraud, Riot gets the chargeback notice. Their automated fraud system then does three things at once: removes the VP, removes any skins you bought with that VP, and flags the account for suspension.
The seller is gone before you notice. The Discord they used is either deleted or rebranded. The cash they took (USDT, gift cards, sometimes PayPal Friends and Family) is not coming back.
What does the ban actually look like?
This is not a stealth shadow-ban. Riot's purchase fraud system is automated and the message is consistent. Account login shows "your account has been suspended due to violations of the Terms of Service" with no appeal pathway. Skins bought during the fraudulent window are removed. If you logged in with the seller's hands on the account, your email and recovery info may have been changed during their session, locking you out before you even know.
A small number of buyers manage to recover the base account by submitting card statements and proving they never authorized the charge. They still lose everything bought with the fraudulent VP, and the account stays flagged for future scrutiny.
Why is this scam getting worse in 2026?
Two things changed recently. The price of fresh stolen card data on fraud markets dropped, which means sellers can hit lower price points and still profit. And Riot's expanded regional pricing for Brazil, Argentina, and Turkey created a real market for "discount VP" that does not immediately scream scam. Scammers piggyback on that by claiming they have a "TR top-up agent" or "ARG-region partner," language that sounds plausible to anyone who has heard of VPN region pricing.
The real Brazilian or Argentinian top-up sites, the legitimate ones Riot tolerates for regional accounts, do not advertise on Discord. They do not DM you. They have public storefronts, no login requests, and visible business registration.
What are the red flags that should kill the deal?
Things that mean walk away, no exceptions:
They ask for your Riot account login. No legitimate top-up service ever needs this. Riot's top-up flow runs through the launcher.
The price is more than 25 to 30 percent below retail. Even the most aggressive regional arbitrage in 2026 does not produce 50 percent off.
They want payment in crypto, gift cards, or PayPal Friends and Family. All three are chargeback-proof for them and zero-recourse for you.
They have a brand-new Discord account or a fresh marketplace listing. Established sellers exist on PlayerAuctions and similar platforms, but a Discord rando with no trade history is a coin flip at best.
They promise "no ban guarantee" or "instant delivery, safe method." These phrases appear in basically every variant of this scam.
What to do if you already bought discounted VP
If the VP hit your account today and you have not been banned yet, the chargeback window has not closed. You still have a few weeks to act:
Do not spend the VP. Skins purchased with fraudulent VP get removed when Riot processes the chargeback, and the spending pattern strengthens the case against your account.
Open a ticket through Riot Support and tell them you believe a recent top-up may have used a fraudulent card. They will not refund you, but a proactive ticket sometimes moves your account out of the auto-ban queue and into manual review.
Change your password and reset 2FA immediately. If the seller logged into your account, they have credentials and recovery info.
Save everything: the Discord conversation, the payment receipt, the seller's username. If your account survives the chargeback wave, you may need this if Riot Support follows up.
If you are reading this before buying, the calculation is simple. Riot sells 11,000 VP for $99.99. If someone is offering it to you for $35, the $65 difference is coming from a stolen card. Your account is the laundering mechanism. That is the entire business model. There is no version of this where you both save money and keep the account.