Sanction teardown · W.D. Oklahoma, USA · 2026-01-09
Zaykariya v. Freedom Mortgage Corporation, et al.
What happened
In W.D. Oklahoma, USA, a filing relied on an unnamed/unconfirmed AI tool to help draft legal argument. The court identified the following problems with the citations in that filing:
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Fabricated (Case Law)Court identified McEwen v. McCullough, 347 F. Supp. 2d 349 as a fake case cited by Plaintiffs.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Court identified Edwards v. First Nat’l Bank of Anchorage, 67 F.3d 1299 as a fake case cited by Plaintiffs.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Court identified Anderson v. Nationwide Mortg. Grp., Inc., 281 B.R. 177 as a fake case cited by Plaintiffs.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Court identified Williams v. Lowndes Cnty., 475 F.3d 820 as a fake case cited by Plaintiffs.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Court identified Smith v. Aegis Mortg. Corp., 560 F.3d 837 as a fake case cited by Plaintiffs.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Court identified In re Barlow, 59 B.R. 707 as a fake case cited by Plaintiffs.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Court identified Sturdivant v. BAC Home Loans, 159 Cal.Rptr.3d 113 as a fake case cited by Plaintiffs.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Court identified United States v. Signatone Corp., 60 F.3d 365 as a fake case cited by Plaintiffs.
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Misrepresented (Case Law)Court noted Plaintiffs cited Speleos v. BAC Home Loans, 755 F.Supp.2d 304 and incorrectly represented it as supporting a RESPA violation, whereas the case did not discuss RESPA.
Which AI tool
an unnamed/unconfirmed AI tool. Note: Charlotin's public database records tool attribution only where a court order, brief, or reporting on the matter states it explicitly; "unidentified" or "implied" means the record indicates AI use but does not name a specific product — we do not guess.
Outcome
Warning
How Citation Safe would have caught this
Citation Safe runs three deterministic layers before a brief is filed: (1) does the citation exist against CourtListener's database of published opinions, (2) if quoted, does that exact language appear in the source, (3) does the cited case actually support the proposition it is cited for. Fabricated case citations fail Layer 1. Fabricated or misattributed quotations fail Layer 2 even when the underlying case is real. Misrepresented holdings — a real case cited for a proposition it does not support — are the target of Layer 3. None of these checks involve asking another language model whether the citation looks right; they are lookups and text-matches against the actual source, which is why a hallucinated citation has to survive a direct lookup against the authoritative source — not another model's opinion — to earn a VERIFIED stamp; our measured false-verify rate is published live at /quality.
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Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/1304/Zaykaria_v._Freedom_Mortage_Corpo.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).