A verified, continuously updated log of real incidents where reports, filings and policies were withdrawn, refunded, corrected or sanctioned because they contained AI fabrications. Every entry is sourced. Nothing here is an opinion.
✓ Every entry verified against a reputable source · logged weekly, never padded.
The register
97
verified incidents across government, the Big Four, the courts and the academic record — and counting.
Latest: Supreme Court of New Mexico · 12 days ago
1 in 277
of biomedical papers in early 2026 cites a fabricated reference — a 12× rise in two years.
2023
1 in 2,828
2025
1 in 458
EARLY 2026
1 in 277
▲ The sharp rise began mid-2024, as AI writing tools spread.
Source: The Lancet · Columbia Nursing audit of 97.1M references · May 2026
The scale
It is not happening to amateurs.
Each figure below is a single, sourced fact — not a total. We do not add refunds, fines and contract values together; that would be exactly the kind of unearned number Ukweli exists to catch.
KPMG · Deloitte · EY
Three of the Big Four published reports with AI fabrications — alongside the UK High Court and a national government.
See the register below for each, with sources.
$110,000
The largest single court penalty in the log for one set of fabricated citations — a US federal sanction.
ABA Journal · District of Oregon, May 2026
97.1M references
Audited in the biomedical literature; 1 in 277 papers carries a fabricated reference, up 12× in two years.
The Lancet · Columbia Nursing, May 2026
The register
Every case. Verified. Sourced.
The trend so far · 97 verified incidents by year
LegalGovernmentConsultingAcademicMedia
Verified incidents in the register, stacked by sector. 2026 is year-to-date (dashed). This counts the register itself — densest for recent, English-language cases — not the true global incidence rate (that is the Lancet figure above). Years count the date of the consequence — the sanction, withdrawal, correction or finding — not the date the document was written.
By type & consequence — click a bar to filter
By fabrication type
By consequence
Severity runs low to high: Corrected → Refunded → Withdrawn → Sanctioned. One fabricated citation has been enough to trigger each.
Filter by sector, region, consequence or year — or search. Newest first. Each entry links to its source and has its own permalink.
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Showing 97 of 97 verified incidents
Supreme Court of New Mexico
Legal United States
Sources & experts +2
Direct contempt; $5,000; barred from the Court
Testimony from wholly fabricated witnesses, including two police officers; false testimony attributed to real witnesses; and misrepresented legal authority in two cited cases — in an appeal from a murder conviction.
Non-existent case citations and incorrect legal propositions, together with misleading quotations, in the respondent's Answer to the Tribunal — and then FURTHER false material in the email sent to explain the first set. Two of the cases cited were relied on for propositions the authorities did not support, so real authorities were misrepresented alongside invented ones. SCOPE POINT: the Tribunal found the allegation proved “in respect of the citing of non-existent cases and incorrect legal propositions” but held that TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS IN CASE CITATIONS WERE NOT SUFFICIENTLY SERIOUS TO AMOUNT TO MISCONDUCT — a tribunal drawing the same line this register draws between a wrong citation and an invented one.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
The Keefe Law Firm, P.A. (attorney Kenneth H. Keefe)
Legal United States
Legal authorities +1
46 hallucinated citations across two briefs
46 hallucinated citations across two briefs — 31 in the amended initial brief and 15 in the reply brief. A mix of wholly non-existent cases, false quotations attributed to real cases, and misrepresented holdings. The court made an express finding of unverified generative-AI use, referring to "his AI misuse".
Citation Verification: 46 non-existent or misrepresented authorities. Fact-Checking: false quotations attributed to real cases.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
US District Court, Western District of Washington (Judge Tiffany M. Cartwright), case 3:24-cv-05808-TMC. Report author: James Kababick, retained testifying expert for the plaintiff.
Legal United States
References & studies +1
Expert report excluded under FRE 702; claims dismissed with prejudice
Hallucinated citations to ACADEMIC ARTICLES inside a retained expert's report, together with citation errors identical to those in a second expert's report. ⚠️ UNUSUAL FOR THIS REGISTER AND THE REASON THE ROW EXISTS: the register's Legal rows are overwhelmingly fabricated LEGAL AUTHORITIES in filings by counsel. Here the fabricated material is SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE, inside an expert's own report, in a product-liability matter about nootropic supplements. 🔴 THE DOCUMENT IS THE EXPERT'S; THE FABRICATION IS COUNSEL'S. Counsel generated the citation table and supplied it to both testifying experts as an appendix, and on her own later account prepared the expert reports; the expert signed without verifying. The court's 4 February 2026 order records that a second expert's report "cites the same articles and includes the same citation errors".
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS)
Government Australia
References & studies +1
A$3.48 million trial; 6 flawed citations reported, 3 acknowledged by ACCS; 4 citation URLs carrying a chatgpt.com source tag
Fabricated and unverifiable academic citations in the “emerging technologies” chapter: DOIs resolving to nothing, DOIs pointing at a different paper than the one cited, and author/journal/year combinations matching no known publication. A separate category of defect was also found — correct articles cited that do not contain the claims attributed to them, which is misattribution rather than invention. Guardian Australia separately found FOUR citation URLs carrying a chatgpt.com source tag. NO REGULATOR OR TRIBUNAL FINDING ON AI CAUSATION FOR THE CITATIONS EXISTS. ACCS ADMITS CHATGPT WAS USED TO EDIT PROSE AND DENIES IT GENERATED THE CITATIONS.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Tribunal de Justiça de São Paulo (36ª Câmara de Direito Privado)
Legal Brazil
Legal authorities
Non-existent precedents created by AI; bad-faith litigation found
The plaintiff's lawyer used a generative AI tool, without any critical review or checking, to create non-existent jurisprudential precedents in the initial petition, in order to bolster her arguments. The court recorded the fabrication as an uncontested fact (“fato incontroverso”) because it was never specifically challenged in the reply or in the responses to the appeal, and had already been recognised at first instance. The plaintiff's answer on appeal was that “the appeal debate should stick to the facts and the substantive law, not the technological instruments used in drafting the pleadings” — an argument the panel rejected. The judgment states no count of fabricated precedents; no figure is asserted here, by decision rather than oversight.
Citation Verification: authorities cited in a filed pleading do not exist and were generated rather than retrieved. Research Methodology: no verification step existed between generation and filing, in breach of a published professional rule (OAB Recommendation 1/2024) that mandates human supervision.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Nova Scotia Court of Appeal (Gogan, J.A.)
Legal Canada
Sources & experts +1
39 transcript discrepancies plus a forged certification page
The self-represented appellant used AI tools to transcribe the audio of two hearings and to assemble his appeal book, instead of the certified court reporter required by Rule 90.29(5). Opposing counsel obtained an independent transcript and identified 39 discrepancies against the appellant's version — testimony inaccurately transcribed, testimony not stated by the witness at all, and entire exchanges between counsel and the trial judge missing altogether. The filed transcripts also carried a “certificate of court transcriber” page bearing the name, Nova Scotia registration number and signature of Sue Loney, a real certified transcriber, who confirmed by affidavit that she had transcribed and certified neither document. The appellant blamed the AI, saying it had pulled Ms Loney's certificate from an unrelated genuine transcript in his files; the Court rejected the AI excuse, finding he had filed a certificate of readiness he knew to be inaccurate and had filed uncertified transcripts twice. His factum cited the impugned transcript 24 times.
Citation Verification: a filed evidentiary record was materially inconsistent with the source audio at 39 points, and the attestation of authenticity was itself fabricated. Precision: the certifying signature, registration number and name belonged to a real person who had not certified the document.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
US District Court, Northern District of Alabama, Northeastern Division (Judge Harold D. Mooty III)
Legal United States
Quotes +1
2 fabricated cases and 7 fabricated quotations in one brief
AI USE IS THE COURT'S INFERENCE, NOT AN ADMISSION — SEE BELOW. The filings contained 2 cases that do not exist (Williams v. City of Anniston; City of Prichard v. Kelley); 7 quotations attributed to real cases that do not contain the quoted material (Speaker, St. George, Stimpson, Griffin Industries, Personnel Bd. of Jefferson Cnty. v. Bailey, Tumey v. Ohio, Connick v. Thompson); and 2 further statements unsupported by the authority cited, one of which misrepresented Ala. Code § 11-47-190. A further false citation appeared in the 179-page amended complaint. ON THE AI ATTRIBUTION: the order carries an Editor's Note describing “unverified citations, likely generated by AI tools,” and footnote 2 states it “appears likely from the nature of the misrepresentations that the filings at issue were generated by artificial intelligence.” No party confirmed AI use. Counsel's own sworn account was different: that his client — who has no law degree — drafted both documents acting “in the capacity of paralegal,” and that citations were transcribed from Google Scholar, JD Supra and Lexology secondary discussions “without retrieving and reading the underlying opinions.” Counsel never pulled or read any cited case before signing and filing. The court treated the two as equivalent: “This is no different than submitting AI-generated work product to the court without thoroughly checking it.”
Citation Verification: 2 of the cited authorities do not exist and 7 quotations are absent from the authorities they are attributed to. Precision: a real statute (Ala. Code § 11-47-190) was cited for a proposition it does not support. On the AI attribution: the court inferred AI use from the nature of the misrepresentations; no party confirmed it, and counsel's own sworn account was that citations were copied from secondary sources without reading the underlying opinions. Carried on that basis.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Cour d'appel du Québec — self-represented appellant
Legal Canada
Legal authorities
Four fabricated decisions, filed after the litigant knew
Four non-existent decisions cited in the appellant's materials — two presented as Supreme Court of Canada judgments, two as Court of Appeal judgments. AI causation is established by admission: the appellant conceded the authorities were produced by ChatGPT, and the court found he had discovered this before filing and proceeded regardless.
Citation Verification: four non-existent appellate decisions cited as authority, filed after the litigant knew they were fabricated.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
US District Court, Middle District of Tennessee, Nashville Division (Magistrate Judge Luke A. Evans)
Legal United States
Quotes +1
Publicly reprimanded over quotations that do not exist — the order states no count
PER THE COURT'S MEMORANDUM ORDER AS PUBLISHED VIA THE AI HALLUCINATION CASES DATABASE, AND NOT CORROBORATED BY ANY INDEPENDENT REPORT AS AT 10 AUGUST 2026: a response brief filed by plaintiff's counsel contained hallucinated quotations and misleading citations. The court found "quotations that did not exist" and "legal citations that gave the impression that an argument in his favor had support when it did not". Attorney Louis W. Ringger III, the sole drafter, confirmed the court's suspicion that a major factor was the failure to check content generated through AI tools, and identified further deficiencies beyond those the court had found. THE ORDER STATES NO COUNT: it describes the category of defect without enumerating it. A count could only be derived from Doc. No. 293 and the redline at Doc. No. 328-3 on the M.D. Tenn. docket, neither of which has been read. No figure is asserted here, by decision rather than oversight.
Citation Verification: quotations attributed to real authorities did not appear in them, and citations were deployed as support for propositions they did not support. The drafter identified further defects the court had not caught. The number of defective citations is not stated in the order and is not asserted here.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
US District Court, District of Connecticut (Judge Vernon D. Oliver)
Legal United States
Quotes +1
16 defective citations across two motions, every underlying case real
16 defective citations across two motions — 9 in the Motion to Dismiss and 7 in the Motion to Exclude Extrinsic Evidence — comprising quotations that do not exist in the cited opinions (Landscape Forms, Yurman Design, Chambers v. Time Warner, Friedl v. City of New York, Fonte), erroneous pin cites (Iqbal, O Zon, Kopec, Pearson v. Gesner, Starter Corp.), and misrepresentations of law (Streetwise Maps, Wilton v. Seven Falls, Cortec Industries). Defence counsel Hilary Miller drafted conventionally, then used Open Law, Claude and ChatGPT for suggested arguments and additional cases. He Shepardised every case in the brief through Lexis to confirm the cases existed — but did not verify that pin cites pointed to the right page or that quotations were accurate. No wholly non-existent case was cited.
Citation Verification: existence of the source was confirmed; correspondence between the source and the claim attributed to it was not. Sixteen citations failed on the second test having passed the first.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
High Court of South Africa, Gauteng Division, Johannesburg (Acting Judge Themba Khaba)
Legal South Africa
Legal authorities +1
12 tabulated citation discrepancies in a High Court judgment, including a case that does not exist
On appeal, the full bench tabulated 12 numbered citation discrepancies in the Acting Judge's judgment (the judgment text and the reporting both refer to "11 discrepancies"). The standout is "Lubbe v Volkswagon SA [2023] 4 All SA 289 (C)" — "This case does not exist" — relied on in five paragraphs: [75], [92], [93], [108] and [112]. Others include a citation belonging to an unrelated case (Myeni given SA Express Ltd v Bagport's citation; MEC for Health Eastern Cape v Mkhintha given Notshokovu v S's), quotes attributed to a correctly named case that in fact come from a different, uncited judgment, and a citation that does not exist at all (Premier for the Province of Gauteng [2020] 4 All SA 559 (SCA)). The discrepancies were identified by the appellant's legal team, agreed by the respondent's, independently confirmed by the senior librarian of the Johannesburg Society of Advocates, and separately verified by a court researcher before the hearing. Critically, the judgment recorded in some instances that junior counsel Ms K Mitchell had supplied references she had never provided: "The errors can therefore not be attributed to counsel."
Citation Verification: a cited authority that does not exist, relied on in five paragraphs of a judgment, plus quotations attributed to correctly named cases that come from different, uncited judgments. Every discrepancy was found by checking the citations against the record — the court used a librarian and a researcher to do what an existence check does.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Supreme Court of Connecticut
Legal United States
Legal authorities +1
~7 hallucinated citations, all introduced after the citations had already been verified
Approximately 7 erroneous and unverified citations across applications for certification and briefs in two appeals. Attorney Ian G. Gottlieb researched using LexisNexis and verified every quotation and citation through Shepard's Citations Service — then pasted the verified drafts into ChatGPT to improve organisation and quality. ChatGPT added new case citations and altered existing ones. The hallucinations did not change the legal propositions, which remained correct, so no one re-verified. The errors were caught by amici curiae represented by the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization, not by the firm.
Citation Verification: seven citations in filed documents could not be matched to the authorities cited. Verification was performed on the pre-AI draft only; the published artefact was never checked.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Raad van Discipline in het ressort 's-Hertogenbosch (Netherlands bar disciplinary tribunal), on the complaint of the deken of the Orde van Advocaten, Limburg
Legal Netherlands
Legal authorities
8 of 8 case-law citations wrong in one filing — 1 non-existent, 7 pointing to unrelated decisions
In the first file, all 8 case-law citations in the defence pleading were wrong: 1 ECLI number did not exist at all, and the other 7 ECLI numbers belonged to entirely unrelated decisions — the kantonrechter noted these included a divorce order and a criminal matter. The same pattern recurred in a second, separate tenancy file, where the pleading again contained references to partly non-existent case law. The pleading also misstated art. 7:274(1)(c) of the Dutch Civil Code and invented a 15-page limit in the Landelijke Procesrichtlijnen Civiel. The advocate said she had treated AI tools as search engines; the only tool she could name was LegalPA, which she has since cancelled.
Citation Verification: a real, well-formed identifier that resolves to the wrong document is the hardest fabrication class to catch, because the citation passes an existence check and fails only on reading. Seven of eight failed exactly there.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
United States Patent and Trademark Office, Office of Enrollment and Discipline (respondent: Brian E. Mitchell, Registration No. 50,612, San Francisco, California)
Legal United States
Legal authorities +1
Public reprimand; 4 violations of the USPTO Rules of Professional Conduct
Citations, quotations and parentheticals to the patent's INTRINSIC RECORD — the specification, figures and prosecution history — in the plaintiff's portion of a Joint Claim Construction Chart. Per the joint stipulated facts, many "referred to portions of the record that did not exist or were inaccurately attributed". Notable as a fabrication of the record of the case itself rather than of external case law, which defeats the standard "check the cited authorities exist" control.
Citation Verification: citations, quotations and parentheticals to the patent's intrinsic record that did not exist or were inaccurately attributed. Fact-Checking: quotations attributed to portions of the specification, figures and prosecution history that do not support them.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
US District Court, Western District of Washington (Judge Tiffany M. Cartwright)
Legal United States
Legal authorities +2
Dozens of false citations across 4 briefs; attorney sanctioned $3,000
Dozens of inaccurate factual and legal citations across at least four filings by counsel, including citations to nonexistent sources and fictitious quotations attributed to real, existing sources. Counsel generated a formatted citation table using Claude and ChatGPT. ⚠️ THE SAME AI-GENERATED TABLE WAS SUPPLIED TO TWO TESTIFYING EXPERTS AS AN APPENDIX and is the origin of the fabrications in their reports; neither expert caught the errors before signing. Those reports are recorded separately — see `2026-08-ledoux-kababick-expert-wdwash` — but the fabrication in all of them is counsel's. Split from a single bundled row on 7 Sep 2026 under the matter-vs-document ruling.
Citation Verification: nonexistent authorities cited as controlling. Fact-Checking: fictitious quotations attributed to real sources. Statistical Claim Audit: an AI-generated citation table propagated into two independent expert reports.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
US Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Texas
Legal United States
Legal authorities +1
Sanctioned over fabrications produced with a paid legal-research AI
PER THE COURT'S ORDER AS PUBLISHED BY THE AI HALLUCINATION CASES DATABASE, AND NOT CORROBORATED BY ANY INDEPENDENT REPORT AS AT 5 AUGUST 2026: motions to quash filed by counsel for the petitioning creditors contained multiple fabricated quotations, citations to non-existent authority, and misleading descriptions of real authority. Counsel — a sole practitioner — said he had not used ChatGPT but had used the generative-AI feature in Westlaw's 'Precision' product; the court rejected his argument that a legal AI tool should be treated more leniently than a consumer one.
Citation Verification: motions contained fabricated quotations and citations to authority that does not exist. The sanction amount and the identification of the AI tool are attributed to the court's order as published by a third-party database and are not independently corroborated.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
UK Home Office
Government United Kingdom
Sources & experts +1
An asylum refusal built on a policy document that does not exist
The Home Office refused a Moroccan woman's asylum claim citing a country policy and information note (CPIN) on Morocco dated July 2021 as authority that Morocco would be safe for her return. The Upper Tribunal could not locate the document and the Home Office's own country policy and information team was unable to confirm it existed; the judge held "it appears that no such CPIN has ever existed." No CPIN on Morocco has been published since 2017. The First-tier Tribunal had already dismissed her appeal relying on the same non-existent document. Asked to produce it, the Home Office first sent a link to an archive where it could not be found, then produced a different, unpublished internal guidance document (a country information note, or CIN) that had never been disclosed to the court — and which does not conclude Morocco is safe for the forcible return of women in her position, recording instead that 40,000 child marriages were granted by exemption in 2018 (one-fifth of all marriages that year) and that Moroccan law does not explicitly criminalise marital rape.
Citation Verification: a government decision letter cites an official policy document that does not exist, and the citation survived into a tribunal decision that relied on it. Existence-checking the cited source is the entire check.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Tribunal Superior de Xustiza de Galicia (Sala do Social, A Coruña)
Legal Spain
Legal authorities +1
24 of 32 citations (75%) fabricated
Of 32 case citations in the appeal, 24 (75%) were fabricated or wrong — non-existent Supreme Court, Constitutional Court and Court of Justice of the EU rulings, several with invented verbatim quotations, all verified false against the CENDOJ case database. The lawyer used a free generative-AI tool without verification and admitted responsibility. Independently corroborated 5 Aug 2026 by four Spanish outlets, all reporting 24 fabricated references and the EUR1,800 fine; Iberley additionally confirms the auto reference (Auto n. 00061/2026, A Coruna, 7 July 2026, recurso de suplicacion 5472/2025) and the 75% proportion. The raw total of 32 is stated in the auto and follows arithmetically from the two corroborated figures.
Citation Verification: 24 of 32 cited authorities do not exist or do not match the quoted text; verified false against CENDOJ.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Supreme Court of India
Legal India
Legal authorities +1
3 of 6 cited precedents did not exist
Of six authorities the tribunal relied on, three citations did not exist, one was a wrong citation carrying an invented paragraph, and two were real citations carrying invented paragraphs. The bank's affidavit said its counsel never cited them and that the tribunal found them through its own research.
Citation Verification: adjudication rested on precedents that do not exist in any legal database.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Labour Court of South Africa, Durban; fabrications originated with the chairperson of a Matjhabeng Local Municipality internal disciplinary hearing
Legal South Africa
Legal authorities
An adjudicator's own ruling cited authorities that do not exist
The chairperson of an internal disciplinary hearing issued a ruling citing case authorities that do not exist. This is established from the primary record: the Gauteng High Court, in FJL v TGO (2025/220239, 31 July 2026, reportable), cites the case at footnote 9 as (2026/157576) [2026] ZALCD 30 and records at paragraph [40] that a stay was granted where "rulings made by a disciplinary chairperson (not a Judge or Acting Judge) citing case authorities which did not exist" were under challenge. PER CLIFFE DEKKER HOFMEYR'S EMPLOYMENT LAW ALERT OF 27 JULY 2026, AND NOT YET CHECKED AGAINST THE JUDGMENT ITSELF: the ruling relied on four authorities, of which only one existed and supported the proposition cited, two did not exist at all, and a fourth was a real decision that did not address the interpretation of collective agreements as claimed. Those figures are single-sourced to that alert and are attributed rather than asserted.
Citation Verification: cited authorities that do not exist, in the reasoning of the decision-maker rather than in a party's submissions. The count of affected authorities is attributed to a law-firm alert and is not yet verified against the judgment.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
KPMG
Consulting United Kingdom
References & studies +1
40 of 45 citations fabricated
Of 45 citations, only 5 pointed to real, intact sources; 40 of 45 titles were fabricated. Case studies about UBS, the UK NHS, Swiss Federal Railways and Transport for London were disputed as inaccurate by the named organisations.
Fact-Checking: case studies contradicted by the named parties (Swiss Federal Railways: “not accurate”). Citation Verification: 40 of 45 cited sources unmatched.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
DCDT (SA Department of Communications & Digital Technologies)
Government South Africa
References & studies
Six fictitious sources in a national policy
At least 6 of the 67 entries in its reference list were fictitious — citations attributed to recognised academic journals whose editors confirmed the articles had never been published.
Citation Verification: ≥6 academic citations matched no real publication (fabricated journals / articles never published).
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
US District Court, Northern District of Mississippi (Judge Sharion Aycock)
Legal United States
Legal authorities
Both sides hallucinated — all 4 attorneys removed
Hallucinated case citations across three briefs filed by both opposing sides in the same matter; the court, not opposing counsel, discovered them. One out-of-state attorney admitted she had filed further pleadings before the same court containing undiscovered fictitious citations, and had continued citing hallucinated cases in other jurisdictions after the problem surfaced. The order does not state a total citation count.
Citation Verification: nonexistent authorities cited by opposing parties in the same proceeding; neither adversarial review nor local-counsel signature caught them.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Oregon Supreme Court
Legal United States
Legal authorities +1
First state-Supreme-Court action
Citations to prior cases that do not exist in the Oregon Appellate Reports or the Oregon Reports, plus fabricated quotes; a later declaration cited at least four more non-existent cases.
Citation Verification: cited authorities could not be matched to real cases.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Department
Legal United States
Legal authorities +1
$10,500 sanction
The brief cited several non-existent cases, included fictitious purported Court of Appeals quotations “wholly contrary to actual law,” and misrepresented the holdings of real cases.
Citation Verification: several cited cases are non-existent; quotations fabricated and contrary to law.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Journal of Medical Ethics (BMJ Group)
Academic United Kingdom
References & studies
References that do not exist, plus peer-review manipulation
The journal's investigation found several cited references did not exist. The sole author — confirmed to be a high-school student (affiliation listed as Shrewsbury Public Schools, Massachusetts) — used generative AI to "identify and understand referenced sources" and did not verify the references before submission. The retraction notice also cites "evidence of peer review manipulation."
Citation Verification: several cited references do not exist; author-confirmed use of generative AI without verification.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Berlingske
Media Denmark
Quotes +1
Invented professor and fabricated quotes in a national daily
An internal AI tool used to summarise expert quotes was run without the source material and invented both quotations and people — including a non-existent DTU technology professor, 'Anne Kjær Nielsen.' Fabricated quotes were attributed to sources who do not exist. Flagged by a reporter at Dagbladet Information.
Citation Verification: quotations and a named expert source are unverifiable and do not exist.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Steven Rosenbaum (author)
Media United States
Quotes +1
Half-a-dozen-plus fabricated quotes in a book about AI and truth
A New York Times review found more than half a dozen misattributed or fabricated quotes. One attributed to tech journalist Kara Swisher ("the most sophisticated AI language model is like a mirror...") was disowned by her, who said she "never said that"; further misattributed quotes involved other named figures. The author disclosed using ChatGPT and Claude during research, writing and editing.
Citation Verification: 16 of 27 sources fabricated, misattributed or broken — including an unverifiable McKinsey statistic.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
US District Court, Eastern District of North Carolina (Magistrate Judge Robert T. Numbers II) / US Department of Justice
Legal United States
Quotes +1
US federal prosecutor fired over an AI-fabricated filing
A brief the federal prosecutor drafted with a generative-AI tool and filed without verifying contained fabricated quotations, misstatements of case holdings, and fabricated regulatory language. The pro se plaintiff — a retired military lawyer — noticed the brief did not read like the sources it cited.
Citation Verification: fabricated quotations and misstated case holdings in a government filing.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Alabama Supreme Court
Legal United States
Legal authorities
Appeal dismissed; $17,200 in costs
Numerous invalid, irrelevant and outright fabricated citations, many AI-generated and to cases that do not exist; the apologising footnote cited two further non-existent cases.
Citation Verification: numerous citations to non-existent cases, including two more in the apology footnote.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Arbitral tribunal — sole arbitrator, Me Michel A. Jeanniot
Legal Canada
Legal authorities +1
Arbitral award annulled; five non-existent authorities in the decision-maker's own reasons
FIVE non-existent authorities in the arbitrator's own reasons, each identified in the judgment: (1) a doctrinal article attributed to Frédéric Bachand, « Prescription et déchéance : frontières mouvantes et enjeux pratiques », Développements récents en droit des contrats, Barreau du Québec, 2016 (note 4), which the Court found “introuvable”; (2) Ville de Montréal c. Syndicat des cols bleus regroupés de Montréal, 2005 QCCA 591 (note 5), “inexistante”; (3) Groleau et Groupe Pages Jaunes Cie, 2011 QCCS 5386 (note 6), which “n'existe pas”; (4) Tremblay c. Commission scolaire de la Jonquière, 2002 CanLII 24357 (QCCA) (note 7), “inexistante”; and (5) the arbitral award Arbitrage CHU Ste-Justine (D.T.E. 2018-30) (note 8), which SOQUIJ confirmed does not exist. The Court recorded at [106] that the decisions cited at footnotes 5 to 7 do not exist, and that each neutral citation led to an unrelated decision.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Nebraska Supreme Court
Legal United States
Legal authorities +1
First US attorney suspended from practice over AI filings
A divorce-appeal brief the court found "potentially AI-generated" was "filled with fictitious cases … and fictitious quotations from statutes." The court listed 20 examples of fictional quotes, incorrect case numbers, or misrepresented holdings, including a wholly fictitious 2019 case, Kennedy v. Kennedy, cited with fabricated quotations. By opposing counsel's count, 57 of 63 references in the brief were defective.
Citation Verification: at least 20 citations fabricated or misrepresented, incl. a wholly fictitious case with fabricated quotations.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
The New York Times
Media United States
Quotes
An AI summary published as a direct quote
A direct quotation attributed to Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre was, per the Times' own editor's note, an AI-generated summary of his views that the AI tool rendered as a verbatim quotation. Poilievre never said the quoted words; the note stated the reporter "should have checked the accuracy of what the A.I. tool returned."
Citation Verification: a load-bearing direct quotation attributed to a named figure is AI-generated and was never said.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Ramat Gan Municipality
Government Israel
Legal authorities +1
₪30,000 in costs against a municipality
A NON-EXISTENT CIRCULAR OF THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION DIRECTOR-GENERAL, together with multiple fabricated recent court precedents, relied on by the municipality in its submissions. The invented circular is the notable part: the fabrication was of a GOVERNMENT POLICY INSTRUMENT, not only of case law — a public authority citing a directive of its own state that did not exist.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Mediahuis (journalist Peter Vandermeersch)
Media Netherlands
Quotes +1
Fabricated quotes in 15 of 53 posts
In 15 of 53 blog posts, quotes were attributed to named individuals and to publications where they could not be found; seven named individuals confirmed they never made the statements — dozens of fabricated quotes in total.
Citation Verification: dozens of quotations attributed to named people and publications are unverifiable; seven named subjects deny saying them.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Tribunal Superior do Trabalho (TST — Brazil)
Legal Brazil
Legal authorities +1
Fake precedents attributed to real ministers
Cited non-existent precedents, including ones falsely attributed to a sitting and a retired Minister (one dated after his retirement); none existed in the TST system.
Citation Verification: 24+ citations incorrect, misrepresented or non-existent.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Trial court, Andhra Pradesh — order reviewed by the Supreme Court of India
Legal India
Legal authorities
A judge decided a case on four judgments that did not exist
Four judgments cited by the trial court in dismissing objections to an Advocate Commissioner's Report did not exist. AI causation is established by a judicial finding: the High Court "realized that the judgments are Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated", as recorded by the Supreme Court. The fabricator here is a judge, not counsel.
Citation Verification: four non-existent judgments relied on by a sitting judge.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
West Midlands Police
Government United Kingdom
Claims & data +1
One fictitious fixture, used to classify away fans as high-risk
Microsoft Copilot generated a fixture between Maccabi Tel Aviv and West Ham that never took place; the non-existent match was used in the force's intelligence report as evidence that Maccabi fans posed an unusual risk. A 10 October 2025 reply from the operation's Gold Commander carried further AI-sourced claims about the Amsterdam disorder — that 2,000 Dutch police had been deployed, that “people were thrown into the river”, and that the disorder was “well organised and targeted towards Muslim communities”.
Fact-Checking: a wholly fabricated event asserted as fact in an operational decision document. Statistical Claim Audit: an unsourced quantitative claim carried forward without attribution or verification.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Corte Suprema de Justicia de Colombia
Legal Colombia
Legal authorities
~US$6,000 fine for fabricated authorities
A legal appeal contained non-existent legal provisions and precedents generated by an AI tool.
Citation Verification: a load-bearing direct quotation is attributed to a named source with no verifiable transcript; the words trace to an AI paraphrase.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Canarias, Sala de lo Penal
Legal Spain
Legal authorities
48 fabricated judgments cited as authority
48 judgments of the Spanish Supreme Court, cited with judgment numbers, dates and identifiers, none of which exist, plus one non-existent report of the Consejo General del Poder Judicial. The court's own documentary specialist verified the citations and confirmed they did not exist.
Citation Verification: 48 Supreme Court judgments cited with numbers, dates and identifiers, none of which exist; verified by the court's own documentary specialist.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Court of Appeal of Alberta
Legal Canada
Legal authorities
CAD 17,550 personal costs
A factum drafted with generative AI cited non-existent authorities — nearly half the table of authorities did not exist.
Citation Verification: 5 of 17 references invented, including a fabricated attribution.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Journal of the Law Society of Scotland
Media United Kingdom
Sources & experts +1
Feature pulled over phantom sources and fabricated quotes
Quotes falsely attributed to interviewees the reporter could not produce. On the balance of the evidence the editor concluded the quotations were "disputed and otherwise problematic," falsely attributed, and likely fabricated, in breach of the Journal's editorial guidelines and the author's contractual obligations.
Citation Verification: fabricated academic references. a quote attributed to a Federal Court judge could not be verified.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
ENISA (EU Agency for Cybersecurity)
Government European Union
References & studies
AI-hallucinated sources across two ENISA threat reports
AI-hallucinated source references across TWO ENISA threat reports, published October and November 2025, found by researchers at Westfälische Hochschule and reported via Der Spiegel; many dead source links. ⚠️ IN ONE OF THE TWO REPORTS — WHICH IS NOT IDENTIFIED IN THE PUBLIC REPORTING — 26 of 492 footnotes were incorrect. Which of the two carries that figure is NOT ESTABLISHED, so the count is not asserted of this document. ENISA said AI had been permitted only 'minor editorial revisions'.
Citation Verification: 21 of 23 quoted passages fabricated across four AI tools.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
General Division of the High Court of Singapore (Assistant Registrar Tan Yu Qing)
Legal Singapore
Legal authorities
S$800 personal costs — Singapore's first AI-citation sanction
Written submissions filed 1 June 2025 cited a case — fabricated name and citation, generated by a generative-AI tool used by a junior lawyer — for the proposition that ad hoc loans between acquaintances are not moneylending. The authority was not in the bundle and could not be traced. Counsel first described it as a clerical error and admitted the citation was fictitious, and that AI had been used, only when pressed by the court.
Citation Verification: a cited authority was fabricated by generative AI and does not exist.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Business Insider
Media United States
Sources & experts +1
About 40 essays pulled
Essays whose named subjects, anecdotes and quoted details could not be verified — part of a fabricated-contributor network, with details contradicting between pieces.
Citation Verification: named subjects and attributed quotes are unverifiable and internally contradictory across pieces.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Government of Newfoundland & Labrador — Education Accord NL
Government Canada
References & studies
15+ fake sources in a 10-year plan
At least 15 citations to non-existent journal articles, including a reference to a 2008 NFB film the NFB confirms does not exist (traced to a style guide's fictitious examples).
Citation Verification: authorities across three AI-assisted motions were non-existent or misquoted with wrong dockets.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Wired (Condé Nast)
Media United States
Sources & experts +1
Phantom expert, no fact-check
Quotes from sources who do not appear to exist (e.g. 'Jessica Hu, an ordained officiant in Chicago'), supplied by a fictitious freelancer whose copy appears AI-generated.
Citation Verification: cited cases confirmed as ChatGPT hallucinations.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
United States District Court for the District of New Jersey — chambers of Judge Julien Xavier Neals
Legal United States
Quotes +1
Two fabricated quotations and misstated case outcomes in a federal court's own opinion
Two quotations attributed to the defendants that do not appear in the sources cited for them — that Todisco publicly stated CorMedix had "resolved all issues related to manufacturing", and that CorMedix issued statements in October 2019 that the company had "all necessary controls and processes in ... place for approval". The opinion also misstated the outcomes of cited cases, indicating that motions to dismiss were denied when they had in fact been granted. Errors identified by Chairman Grassley, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, in his letter of 6 October 2025.
Fact-Checking: two quotations attributed to a party that do not appear in the cited sources. Citation Verification: cited cases whose outcomes are stated as the opposite of what they were.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi — chambers of Judge Henry T. Wingate
Legal United States
Quotes +1
Non-party plaintiffs and defendants, misquoted statutory text, and declarations of four people not in the record
Chairman Grassley's letter of 6 October 2025 records that the order contained "serious inaccuracies, including: (1) naming plaintiffs and defendants that are not parties in this case; (2) misquoting the statutory text; (3) making factually inaccurate statements that are not supported by the record; and (4) referencing declarations of four individuals who do not appear anywhere in this case".
Fact-Checking: parties named who are not in the case, and statements unsupported by the record. Citation Verification: misquoted statutory text and declarations attributed to four individuals who do not appear in the record.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Springer Nature
Academic United Kingdom
References & studies
25 of 46 references unverifiable
Publisher could not verify 25 of 46 references; of 18 checked, about two-thirds did not exist or had substantial errors.
Citation Verification: fabricated citations across three separate briefs.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Politiken (JP/Politikens Hus)
Media Denmark
Claims & data +1
6 false statements in one fact box, including 2 books the author did not write
6 discrete false statements in a single AI-generated fact box about the living author Harald Voetmann: (1) credited him with the book “Konkylier”; (2) credited him with “Vandmærket”, which is a short-story collection by Naja Marie Aidt; (3) said he had received Montanas Litteraturpris, which he had not; (4) said he won Kritikerprisen for “Helioskatastrofen”, which is a novel by Linda Boström Knausgård — he won it for “Alt under månen”; (5) misstated the citation for his Politiken Frit Flet prize; (6) dated his election to Det Danske Akademi to 2022 rather than 2021. Editor-in-chief Amalie Kestler confirmed the box was produced by an open search in the AI system Magna rather than by Politiken's archive-backed fact box tool, and was never fact-checked afterwards — “our guidelines have been broken”.
Statistical / Factual Claim Audit: six attributed facts about a named living person published with no verification step between generation and print. What was fabricated is a bibliography — works and prizes attributed to a real person who did not produce or receive them — rather than a footnote.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
White House / US MAHA Commission
Government United States
References & studies
7 nonexistent studies
At least seven cited studies were non-existent, with dozens of further reference errors; many footnotes carried the 'oaicite' (ChatGPT) marker.
Citation Verification: cited jurisprudence and doctrine were non-existent or erroneous; the court found them AI-fabricated.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
US District Court, District of Minnesota
Academic United States
References & studies
2 of 15 citations fabricated
Of 15 citations in a misinformation expert's declaration, at least two referenced academic articles that do not exist — admitted ChatGPT hallucinations.
Citation Verification: cited authorities cannot be located in any reporter or case database — they do not exist.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Alaska Department of Education and Early Development (DEED)
Government United States
References & studies
4 of 6 citations fabricated — and the corrected version still carried false references
Four of six academic citations supporting the resolution were fabricated — real journals paired with non-existent article titles, and URLs resolving to unrelated studies. AI causation is established by admission: Commissioner Deena Bishop acknowledged using generative AI to produce the citations, describing the document as "a first draft that had been posted in error". A departmental spokesperson had initially described the false sources as "placeholders" used during drafting.
Citation Verification: four fabricated references in a policy document. Fact-Checking: fabricated sources survived the correction and reached the vote.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia
Legal Australia
Legal authorities
First Aussie lawyer regulated over AI fakes
An AI-generated list of authorities cited cases that did not exist, with inaccurate summaries; none verified before filing.
Fact-Checking: fabricated quotes attributed to real people, incl. the state governor, across 7 stories.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space (Sage Publishing)
Academic United States
References & studies
18 references corrected by corrigendum; a March 2024 paper citing a non-existent 2026 publication
Multiple erroneous entries in the article's reference list, characterised in the reporting as “incorrectly cited, abjectly false, or obviously manufactured”, including at least one citation to a publication dated 2026 — two years in the future at the time of publication.
Fact-Checking: reference-list entries that do not correspond to real publications. Citation Verification: a citation dated two years after the article's own publication.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
KPMG (Australian government report)
Government Australia
References & studies
Invented a Retraction Watch reference
A fabricated reference attributed to Retraction Watch's own founders for a paper they never wrote.
Citation Verification: cited non-existent cases and fabricated quotations.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Sports Illustrated (The Arena Group)
Media United States
Sources & experts
Fake bylines, AI headshots; content pulled
Author identities: bylines and biographies for writers with no verifiable existence, with profile photos that were on sale on an AI-generated headshot marketplace. The publisher denied the article text itself was AI-generated.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
Parliament of Australia — Senate consulting-services inquiry
Government Australia
Claims & data
Bard-fabricated allegations vs the Big Four
Multiple fictitious case studies of Big Four wrongdoing generated by Google Bard (false NAB, Probuild, Patisserie Valerie, Westpac claims) — none occurred.
Citation Verification: every quotation attributed to the named subject is AI-fabricated; no interview was ever conducted.
Illustrative — how Ukweli would flag this against the public record. Not a live analysis.
No incidents match those filters.
What the data shows
Four things the register makes plain.
Not a list of anecdotes — a pattern. These are read straight off the verified incidents below and update as the register grows.
4 → 34
The pace is rising.
Logged incidents climbed from 4 in 2023 to 34 in 2025, with 50 already logged in the first 9 months of 2026. The independent rate agrees: the Lancet finds fabricated references up a 12-fold rise in two years.
38
It is not just lawyers.
The courtroom cases are the famous ones — but beyond the 59 of those, 38 more incidents hit the Big Four (KPMG, Deloitte, EY), national governments, peer-reviewed journals and major newsrooms, across 22 countries. No corner of professional writing is exempt.
54
The consequences are real.
54 of 97 incidents ended in a formal sanction and 25 documents were withdrawn outright. Penalties run up to a $110,000 court fine, suspended law licences and struck filings.
1 pattern
It looks exactly right.
Every case is the same defect: a confident, plausible citation, source or quote that a professional read, trusted and signed off — and that no human reviewer caught until after it was published.
Where Ukweli comes in
That last pattern is the whole point. Every entry in this register began as a reference that passed human review and failed only in public. That single class of defect — fabricated or unverifiable citations, sources, quotes and claims — is exactly what Ukweli is built to catch before a document leaves your hands. It reads every citation and claim, not just the suspicious ones, and tells you plainly whether to hold, review or clear. We keep this register because it is the public evidence for the problem Ukweli works on.
Every incident is confirmed against at least one reputable source — mainstream news, a legal or official record, or the organisation itself. If it cannot be verified, it is not listed. An empty week is an honest week.
What counts
Documents withdrawn, refunded, corrected, retracted or sanctioned specifically because of AI-generated, fabricated or hallucinated citations or sources. Document-authenticity and version-integrity disputes are tracked separately, not folded in.
The full register is published as a single JSON file under a
Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 licence. You can
reuse it commercially, redistribute it and build on it — including for
machine-readable and AI use — provided you attribute it. There is no key, no
sign-up and no rate limit.
A single JSON document: a meta block and an incidents array. It is
rewritten every time the register is published, so the URL is stable and the contents are
current. meta.last_updated and meta.record_count tell you which
version you have.
What is in a record
Each incident carries what happened (org, country,
sector, doc_type, what_fabricated), what it cost
(consequence_type, consequence_detail), when
(incident_date with an explicit date_precision, plus
date_logged), and the receipts (source_urls).
Every field is documented inside the file itself,
in meta.fields — read it there rather than from any summary, including this
one. meta.verification_rule states the standard every entry had to meet.
Two things to read before you use it
Dates carry their own precision. Where a source
gave only a month or a year, date_precision says so. Treat
incident_date as accurate only to that precision — do not render it as a
day.
This is a register, not a survey. It counts
incidents that were reported and could be verified, so it is a floor and not a rate. It cannot
tell you what share of all documents contain fabrications, and nothing here should be
presented as though it can.
How to attribute it
Use this line, or something close to it:
“Ukweli Integrity Watch, The Orkestra, CC BY 4.0
— ukweli.io/integrity”
Please link to ukweli.io/integrity,
and cite the individual incident page where you are relying on a single record — each one
has its own permanent URL and lists its sources in full. If you publish something built on
this data, we would like to see it: hello@ukweli.io.
The two-second test
Could you spot the fabricated citation?
Three citations pulled from real documents. One checks out. One cites a law that no longer exists. One was simply made up. Reveal what Ukweli sees in each.
“… in accordance with the Stock Exchange Control Act, 1985 (as amended).”
From a corporate governance document
HOLD
Citation check: this Act was repealed and replaced by the Financial Markets Act 19 of 2012. It is cited as if it were current law.
Public legal record · South African Financial Markets Act 19 of 2012
“Fabricated citations: an audit across 2.5 million biomedical papers. The Lancet (2026).”
From a research summary
VERIFIED
Citation check: matches a real, indexed publication. This one is sound — Ukweli clears what is genuine.
Most readers can’t tell — the fabrications look exactly like the real ones. Ukweli reads every citation, not just the suspicious ones. Integrify your document →
Before you publish
Don't become an entry.
Ukweli checks a document's claims and citations before it leaves your hands — and tells you plainly whether to hold, review, or clear it. Ukweli it first.