I have seen them sell used pulls of chips as new that had the pins HASL(hot air solder leveled) to look somewhat new.
HASL is a PCB finish. Has nothing to do with recycling components.
Yes utsource sells the same fake parts that every other Chinese broker does.. because they all source their parts from the same markets. Sometimes it's worth the risk. i.e. I have tons of 68SEC000 parts, some of them have suspect markings, but they all work and they were considerably cheaper than digikey so whatever. They could be 68EC000s for all I know.
There are guys in China that reimplement $5 chips using cheaper parts so if you think that your chances of getting a real chip that's worth around $200 from a broker in China are high you are bonkers.
If you don't want to pay the going rate but don't want to be stung look for sellers in the US or Europe that are dealing with surplus, liquidations etc.
