Sanction teardown · Federal Court, Canada · 2026-05-21
Maryia Sinkova v The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration
What happened
In Federal Court, Canada, 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 found the cited Abdollahzadeh decision does not exist; the neutral citation given corresponds to another case and the cited passages do not support the Applicant's assertions.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Court found the cited Torkestani decision does not exist; the neutral citation provided corresponds to Sidoli v. Canada and does not support the Applicant's asserted propositions about 'active processing'.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Court found the cited Yavari decision does not exist; the neutral citation corresponds to Singh and does not support the Applicant's statement regarding partner-agency delays.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Court found the cited D'Errico decision does not exist; the neutral citation corresponds to Singh and does not support the asserted point about family reunification statutory objectives.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Court found the cited Moghadam decision does not exist; the neutral citation corresponds to a different case and does not support the Applicant's proposition about procedural steps justifying delay.
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Fabricated (Case Law)Court found the cited Farah decision does not exist as cited; the neutral citation corresponds to an unrelated decision (Society of Composers v. Vidéotron) and does not support the Applicant's point about prejudice in mandamus.
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
Memorandum struck from the Court record and removed
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/2163/Sinkova-v.-Canada-Citizenship-and-Immigration-2026-FC-650-CanLII.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).