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Case Intel:

• Attorneys fighting OnlyFans cited 11 completely fictional court cases in their legal briefs, thanks to AI tools that apparently have a vivid imagination
• Lead counsel threw his co-counsel under the bus, blaming a "family crisis" for the AI mishap that's now public record
• OnlyFans wants the case moved to England, and these fake citations might just give them the ammunition they need

By Samuel Lopez — USA Herald

LOS ANGELES, CA — August 21, 2025, 5:45 PM — Sometimes the most advanced technology produces the most basic problems. Attorneys suing OnlyFans learned this the hard way Thursday when they had to sheepishly tell a federal judge they'd be asking permission to fix court filings stuffed with AI-generated fake citations.

The plaintiffs in a proposed class action lawsuit told U.S. District Court Judge Fred W. Slaughter that they're ready to clean up their mess "as soon as possible" after OnlyFans parent company Fenix International Ltd. called them out for citing 11 completely made-up court cases among 18 total citations in a recent brief.

Here's what makes this particularly awkward: this isn't the lawyers' first rodeo with phantom citations. According to Fenix, this marks the third time in just over a month that the same legal team has submitted "false, AI-generated law" to the court. At some point, you'd think they'd learn to fact-check their robot research assistant.

The Case Behind the Chaos

The underlying lawsuit reads like a digital-age soap opera. Five anonymous OnlyFans subscribers (identified only by initials N.Z., R.M., B.L., S.M., and A.L.) claim the platform scammed them into thinking they were chatting with actual content creators when they were really talking to professional impersonators. They're alleging this constitutes racketeering under federal RICO laws—the same statutes typically used against organized crime families.

OnlyFans has been trying to kill the case since December, arguing that subscribers agreed to take any disputes to courts in England and Wales when they clicked "agree" on the platform's terms of service. After Judge Slaughter initially denied their motion to dismiss, the company asked for reconsideration based on a July 2025 California Supreme Court ruling that made it easier to enforce foreign forum-selection clauses.

That's when things went sideways for the plaintiffs' lawyers.

When AI Becomes "Artificially Inaccurate"

The citation catastrophe unfolded in an August 11 opposition brief where lawyers from the prestigious firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro attempted to argue why the case should stay in California federal court. According to a declaration filed by Skadden Arps associate Or-el Vaknin (representing OnlyFans), he discovered "multiple examples of quoted language that does not appear in the cases cited by plaintiffs."

When Vaknin ran the exact quoted language through Westlaw—the legal profession's gold-standard research database—he found zero results. That's lawyer-speak for "these quotes don't exist anywhere in the real world."

The Blame Game Begins

Rather than simply acknowledge the error, lead counsel Robert Carey of Hagens Berman chose to throw his colleague under the legal bus in spectacular fashion. In a statement that's now part of the public record, Carey explained that a "Yale Law School graduate and trusted colleague who has provided excellent work for over a decade" was responsible for the AI-enhanced brief.

But wait, there's more. Carey didn't stop at professional credentials—he dove headfirst into personal family tragedy. The unnamed attorney was apparently dealing with her father's entry into hospice care while he battled Parkinson's disease. "Under that strain, she turned to an AI tool to help polish her drafts, not realizing that in doing so, the tool had introduced or altered citations and text," Carey explained.

Here's where Carey's explanation raises eyebrows among legal ethics experts: when lawyers seek to correct their own mistakes in court, they typically need only claim "mistake, error, or inadvertence." There's no requirement—or professional wisdom—in airing personal family crises in public court filings. The fact that Carey felt compelled to do so suggests just how desperate he was to distance himself from this professional embarrassment.

Making Bad Worse

As if fake citations weren't enough, Carey also admitted the brief containing the fictional cases was filed late—another strike against the legal team's credibility with the court. "While late submissions are a reality in litigation, we are strengthening our procedures to ensure that our review process accounts for this issue in the future," he said, in what might qualify as the legal profession's most understated mea culpa of 2025.

The attorney who created the AI-enhanced documents has notably not filed a formal appearance in the case, meaning she's not officially representing the plaintiffs. Whether that's strategic legal maneuvering or professional damage control remains unclear.

The Irony of AI Fact-Checking AI

There's a delicious irony buried in this mess: OnlyFans' legal team used Westlaw to verify the fake citations, but Westlaw itself now incorporates AI tools directly into its platform. So essentially, they used one AI system to fact-check another AI system's hallucinations. It's AI fact-checking all the way down, with humans somewhere in the middle hoping it all works out.

What's Next

The plaintiffs have until August 27 to file their motion to correct the record, though they've indicated they're ready to move faster if the judge demands it. Meanwhile, OnlyFans is arguing that these repeated citation errors demonstrate such "abuse of the judicial system" that the plaintiffs have essentially forfeited their right to oppose moving the case to England.

What This Motion Does: OnlyFans is essentially arguing that the lawyers' repeated use of fake citations shows they're not competent to litigate in U.S. federal court, so the case should be dismissed or transferred to English courts where it "belongs" under the platform's terms of service.

The case highlights a growing problem in the legal profession: lawyers increasingly rely on AI tools for research and writing, but the technology isn't sophisticated enough to distinguish between real legal precedent and convincing-sounding fiction. When ChatGPT and similar tools "hallucinate" fake court cases, the results can be professionally devastating for attorneys who don't verify the AI's work.

For OnlyFans subscribers hoping to see their racketeering claims resolved, the fake citation fiasco represents yet another delay in what's already been a year-long legal battle. Whether the case ultimately proceeds in California federal court or gets shipped off to England may now depend as much on judicial patience with AI-generated legal fiction as on the actual merits of the forum-selection dispute.

Case Status

The OnlyFans users are represented by Christopher Pitoun, Robert B. Carey, Michella A. Kras and Leonard W. Aragon of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, Andrea R. Gold, Annick M. Persinger, Keith T. Vernon and Shana H. Khader of Tycko and Zavareei LLP, Andrew W. Knox of Timoney Knox LLP and Andrew C. Stone and Seth T. Goertz of Dorsey & Whitney LLP.

Fenix International Ltd. and Fenix Internet LLC are represented by Jason D. Russell, Hillary A. Hamilton, Or-el Vaknin, Peter B. Morrison and Raza Rasheed of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP.

The case is N.Z. et al. v. Fenix International Ltd. et al., case number 8:24-cv-01655, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

Sources:

• [Plaintiffs' Notice of Intent to File Motion] (U.S. District Court, Aug. 21, 2025)
• [Fenix Reply Brief] (U.S. District Court, Aug. 19, 2025)
• [Original Class Action Complaint] (Filed July 2024, Case No. 8:24-cv-01655)

🛑 It should be noted that the assertions in this lawsuit are merely allegations and have not been proven in a court of law.