TL;DRA peer-reviewed CMU study (ICSE 2026) found 6 million fake stars across 18,617 repositories using 301,000 accounts - with AI/LLM repos the largest non-malicious categoryStars sell for $0.03 to $0.85 each on at least a dozen websites, Fiverr gigs, and Telegram channels - no dark web requiredVCs explicitly use stars as sourcing signals: Redpoint found the median star count at seed is 2,850, and firms run automated scrapers to find fast-growing reposWe ran our own analysis sampling 150 profile...