# The canonical AI-hallucination sanction: $5,000, jointly and severally, for the lawyers who filed six ChatGPT-fabricated cases in Mata v. Avianca

> On June 22, 2023, Judge P. Kevin Castel of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York sanctioned attorneys Steven A. Schwartz and Peter LoDuca and their firm, Levidow, Levidow & Oberman P.C., imposing a $5,000 penalty jointly and severally under Rule 11. Their March 1, 2023 opposition brief in Roberto Mata's injury suit against Avianca cited six decisions — 'Varghese', 'Miller', 'Petersen', 'Shaboon', 'Martinez' and 'Durden' — that Respondents acknowledged were generated by ChatGPT and do not exist. The court found subjective bad faith ('acts of conscious avoidance and false and misleading statements to the Court'), ordered counsel to notify their client and every judge falsely named as an author of a fake opinion, and wrote the sentence the whole genre now quotes: 'Technological advances are commonplace and there is nothing inherently improper about using a reliable artificial intelligence tool for assistance. But existing rules impose a gatekeeping role on attorneys to ensure the accuracy of their filings.'

- Verification status: verified
- Case type: deployment
- Provider: ChatGPT (OpenAI), used by plaintiff's counsel as a legal-research tool — the court's opinion names the tool as the source of the fabricated opinions
- Client: Steven A. Schwartz and Peter LoDuca of Levidow, Levidow & Oberman P.C. — plaintiff's counsel in Mata v. Avianca, Inc., No. 22-cv-1461 (PKC) (S.D.N.Y.), Legal services — personal-injury litigation (named)
- Sector: legal / US / cross
- Verified on: 2026-08-27
- Canonical URL: https://theinternetninja.com/stories/mata-v-avianca-chatgpt-fake-citations-5000-sanction-rule-11-sdny-2023/
- Source: The Internet Ninja (theinternetninja.com), independent verified-proof platform

## Outcomes

| Metric | Before | After |
| --- | --- | --- |
| What the filing contained (per the court) |  |  |
| The admission on the record (June 8, 2023 hearing, quoted in the opinion) |  |  |
| The finding |  |  |
| Sanction |  |  |

## Verification method

All three court PDFs (Doc. 54 sanctions opinion and Doc. 55 dismissal opinion of 2023-06-22; Doc. 56 penalty-transfer order of 2023-06-30) fetched live from the public RECAP archive this session; Docs. 54 and 56 byte-tied (SHA-1 = Wayback CDX digest) to Wayback captures, Doc. 54's digest stable across every capture 2023-2026; AP and CNBC day-of relays captured and probed for the quoted text; every quote verified mechanically against stored captures (quotecheck 18/18)

## FAQ

**How much were the lawyers in Mata v. Avianca sanctioned for the ChatGPT citations?**

On June 22, 2023, Judge P. Kevin Castel imposed a single $5,000 penalty, jointly and severally, on Steven A. Schwartz, Peter LoDuca and their firm Levidow, Levidow & Oberman under Rule 11. Press reports of '$5,000 each' are a misstatement; the order is one $5,000 penalty in total.

**How many fake ChatGPT cases were in the Mata v. Avianca brief?**

Six. The March 1, 2023 opposition brief cited 'Varghese', 'Miller', 'Petersen', 'Shaboon', 'Martinez' and 'Durden', which the respondents acknowledged were generated by ChatGPT and do not exist.

## Full case file

## The problem

Generative AI produces legal citations that look exactly like real ones —
reporter volumes, docket numbers, judges' names — whether or not the cases
exist. In March 2023 that failure mode reached a federal courtroom for the
first time at scale: a New York personal-injury lawyer, researching a Montreal
Convention limitations question, filed an opposition brief built on cases
ChatGPT had invented. The court's own account is blunt: the Respondents
"submitted non-existent judicial opinions with fake quotes and citations
created by the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, then continued to stand
by the fake opinions after judicial orders called their existence into
question" ([source](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.54.0.pdf)).

This is a verified negative: an independent federal court, in a signed public
opinion, measured what that workflow produced and priced it. It is the case
every later AI-sanction ruling cites — including the [Coomer v. Lindell](/stories/coomer-v-lindell-mypillow-attorneys-ai-brief-30-defective-citations-3000-sanctions-each-2025/)
order already in this corpus ([source](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.54.0.pdf)).

## What the court found

Six decisions cited in the March 1, 2023 Affirmation in Opposition — "Varghese",
"Miller", "Petersen", "Shaboon", "Martinez" and "Durden" — were, as Respondents
themselves ultimately acknowledged, "generated by ChatGPT and do not exist"
([source](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.54.0.pdf)).
Two independent newsrooms carried the same count the same day: the brief
"included six fictitious case citations generated by an artificial intelligence
chatbot" ([source](https://www.reuters.com/legal/new-york-lawyers-sanctioned-using-fake-chatgpt-cases-legal-brief-2023-06-22/)),
and AP reported the court acted "when it was noticed that six legal cases
listed to support their March 1 written arguments did not exist"
([source](https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-chatgpt-fake-case-lawyers-d6ae9fa79d0542db9e1455397aef381c)).

The court dissected the flagship fake, "Varghese v. China Southern Airlines":
its "legal analysis is gibberish", the opinion showing "stylistic and reasoning
flaws that do not generally appear in decisions issued by United States Courts
of Appeals" ([source](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.54.0.pdf)).

The colloquy from the June 8 hearing is the record's core artifact
([source](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.54.0.pdf)):

> THE COURT: And what did you find when you went to look up the full Varghese
> decision?
> MR. SCHWARTZ: I couldn't find it.
> THE COURT: And yet you cited it in the brief to me.

What turned an embarrassing mistake into sanctions was the two months after
Avianca's lawyers flagged the citations: instead of withdrawing the brief,
counsel stood by the fake opinions, and the court found "bad faith on the part
of the individual Respondents based upon acts of conscious avoidance and false
and misleading statements to the Court" ([source](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.54.0.pdf)).

## The order

On June 22, 2023, the court sanctioned Schwartz, LoDuca and the Levidow Firm
under Rule 11: "A penalty of $5,000 is jointly and severally imposed on
Respondents and shall be paid into the Registry of this Court within 14 days of
this Opinion and Order" — a single joint penalty the court called "sufficient
but not more than necessary to advance the goals of specific and general
deterrence" ([source](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.54.0.pdf)).
Reuters reported the same single figure — "a $5,000 fine in total"
([source](https://www.reuters.com/legal/new-york-lawyers-sanctioned-using-fake-chatgpt-cases-legal-brief-2023-06-22/)).

The non-monetary sanctions were the sharper edge: the court ordered counsel to
"send via first-class mail a letter individually addressed to each judge falsely
identified as the author" of a fake opinion ([source](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.54.0.pdf));
CNBC reported that the judge "ordered them to notify each judge falsely
identified as the author of the bogus case rulings about the sanction"
([source](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/22/judge-sanctions-lawyers-whose-ai-written-filing-contained-fake-citations.html)).
No apology was ordered — "a compelled apology is not a sincere apology"
([source](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.54.0.pdf)).

Eight days later the court's own administrative order directed the Clerk "to
transfer the penalty in the amount of $5,000 from the Registry of this Court to
the Miscellaneous Fines, Penalties, and Forfeitures Fund" — the docket's own
confirmation the penalty was received ([source](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.56.0.pdf)).

The same day as the sanctions opinion, in a separate order, the court granted
Avianca's motion to dismiss the underlying claim as time-barred: the client
lost the case too ([source](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/22/judge-sanctions-lawyers-whose-ai-written-filing-contained-fake-citations.html)).

## Why this matters for AI-led operations

Every critical figure in this story originates with an independent measurer — a
federal judge with no stake in any AI vendor and no marketing narrative to serve.
The court itself drew the operational line that TIN's verification thesis rests
on: "there is nothing inherently improper about using a reliable artificial
intelligence tool for assistance. But existing rules impose a gatekeeping role on
attorneys to ensure the accuracy of their filings" ([source](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.54.0.pdf)).
An AI step inserted into a professional workflow with no verification step behind
it produced six fabricated authorities in one brief; the cost — monetary, and
reputational by court-ordered disclosure — was borne by the professionals who
signed the output.

**A note on source strength.** The three critical figures — the $5,000 joint
penalty, the six ChatGPT-fabricated cases, and the order to notify each
falsely-named judge — each rest on the Tier-1 court PDFs (Docs. 54 and 56),
byte-tied to Wayback captures, and are independently corroborated by AP, Reuters
and CNBC. The weakest load-bearing source is the dismissal detail: it rests on
[source](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.55.0.pdf),
which was fetched live from RECAP but has no Wayback snapshot yet (archival gap
flagged); it supports context only, and the CNBC relay corroborates it.

## How this was verified

- **Method:** All three court PDFs (Doc. 54 sanctions opinion and Doc. 55
  dismissal opinion of 2023-06-22; Doc. 56 penalty-transfer order of 2023-06-30)
  fetched live from the public RECAP archive; Docs. 54 and 56 byte-tied (SHA-1 =
  Wayback CDX digest) to Wayback captures; AP, Reuters and CNBC day-of relays
  captured; every quote verified mechanically against stored captures.
- **Date verified:** 2026-08-03.
- **Not claimed:** "$5,000 each" (a press misstatement — the penalty is one
  $5,000, jointly and severally); "first ever" framing; the Second Circuit
  appeal's outcome (artifact not fetched); the ChatGPT chat-log exhibits (cited
  only as quoted inside the opinion).

## Sources

1. U.S. District Court, S.D.N.Y. — *Opinion and Order on Sanctions*, Mata v.
   Avianca, Inc., No. 22-cv-1461 (PKC) [Doc. 54] · 2023-06-22 ·
   https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.54.0.pdf
   — **Tier 1** (court-signed public opinion; origin document).
2. U.S. District Court, S.D.N.Y. — *Opinion and Order* granting the motion to
   dismiss (time-barred) [Doc. 55] · 2023-06-22 ·
   https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.55.0.pdf
   — **Tier 1** (court order; archival gap flagged, context only).
3. U.S. District Court, S.D.N.Y. — *Order* transferring the $5,000 penalty to
   the Fines fund [Doc. 56] · 2023-06-30 ·
   https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.56.0.pdf
   — **Tier 1** (court order; penalty-received confirmation).
4. Associated Press — "Lawyers submitted bogus case law created by ChatGPT. A
   judge fined them $5,000" · 2023-06-22 ·
   https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-chatgpt-fake-case-lawyers-d6ae9fa79d0542db9e1455397aef381c
   — **Tier 2** (independent national newsroom).
5. Reuters (Sara Merken) — "New York lawyers sanctioned for using fake ChatGPT
   cases in legal brief" · 2023-06-22 ·
   https://www.reuters.com/legal/new-york-lawyers-sanctioned-using-fake-chatgpt-cases-legal-brief-2023-06-22/
   — **Tier 2** (independent national newsroom).
6. CNBC — "Judge sanctions lawyers for brief written by A.I. with fake
   citations" · 2023-06-22 ·
   https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/22/judge-sanctions-lawyers-whose-ai-written-filing-contained-fake-citations.html
   — **Tier 2** (independent national newsroom).

## Related case files

- [Coomer v. Lindell (MyPillow)](/stories/coomer-v-lindell-mypillow-attorneys-ai-brief-30-defective-citations-3000-sanctions-each-2025/)
  — the direct descendant that cites Mata, with 30 defective AI citations and
  $3,000 sanctions each.
- [Wadsworth v. Walmart](/stories/wadsworth-v-walmart-morgan-morgan-ai-hallucinated-citations-5000-rule-11-sanctions-2025/)
  — the same $5,000 Rule 11 figure applied to a large-firm brief.
- [Gauthier v. Goodyear](/stories/gauthier-v-goodyear-attorney-ai-hallucinated-citations-2000-sanction-generative-ai-cle-2024/)
  — a smaller sanction that adds a generative-AI CLE requirement.
- [McCarthy v. DEA](/stories/mccarthy-v-dea-3d-cir-24-2704-ai-fabricated-citations-public-reprimand-first-impression-2026/)
  — a federal appellate first-impression reprimand in the same lineage.