Your skepticism is warranted, but just to note: > At first the accounts were sourced from the darknet, then they were created by the Chrome extension The art

Your skepticism is warranted, but just to note: > At first the accounts were sourced from the darknet, then they were created by the Chrome extension The article says they bought Google Accounts on darknet and _created GCP accounts_ from the chrome extension. Presumably "GCP Account" here means a new GCP project/billing account with free trial or using the always free usage. So it's vague and difficult to believe but not actually contradictory.