Was Fernando Betancourt Gómez v. Colegio de Profesionales sanctioned over AI-generated citations?

Fernando Betancourt Gómez v. Colegio de Profesionales (Puerto Rico, August 22, 2025) is a documented matter involving citations that could not be verified against the reporters named. The recorded outcome was: Monetary sanction: $1,000 on counsel; referral to PR Supreme Court for disciplinary review; judge recusal. $1,000 in monetary penalties.

Which AI tool was involved in Fernando Betancourt Gómez v. Colegio de Profesionales?

The order in Fernando Betancourt Gómez v. Colegio de Profesionales does not identify a specific generative tool by name. The court treated the citations as the product of an unverified AI-assisted drafting workflow.

August 22, 2025 · AI sanctions database

Fernando Betancourt Gómez v. Colegio de Profesionales

Fernando Betancourt Gómez v. Colegio de Profesionales is one matter in the Veritas record of US court proceedings involving AI-generated citations that could not be verified against the reporters named. The summary below is drawn from the underlying court document, linked at the foot of this page.

Court: Puerto Rico
Date: August 22, 2025
Party: Lawyer
AI tool: Not identified in the order
Outcome: Monetary sanction: $1,000 on counsel; referral to PR Supreme Court for disciplinary review; judge recusal
Penalty: $1,000 in monetary penalties.

FineBar referralProfessional sanction

What the record shows

The Puerto Rico trial court found that the dismissal motion filed by codefendant Alvarado Colón's attorneys contained at least six citations to nonexistent Puerto Rico Supreme Court cases plus fabricated quotations; counsel admitted the citations did not exist, characterizing it as an attribution error and insinuating reliance on general internet and AI sources. Under Rule 9.3 of Civil Procedure the court imposed a total $1,000 sanction on the two attorneys for causing unjustified delay (payable in revenue stamps within 30 days), referred their conduct to the Puerto Rico Supreme Court for disciplinary evaluation, and recused herself from cases involving them.

This entry reflects the court document as filed. The citations at issue could not be located in the reporters named at the time of the order. The reading here is descriptive of the public record and is not legal advice.

Source documents

Primary court document ↗

The test this filing did not run

Every matter in this record shares one mechanism: a citation that did not resolve to an opinion in the reporter named, in a brief that was filed before any verification step ran. Veritas runs that step. The Filing Risk Scanner extracts each citation, resolves it against reporter and public-record sources, and returns a verdict on each one — located, partial, or not located in reporter — before the brief is signed.

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Filed under · AI sanctions database · Puerto Rico

About this publication

Veritas is a pre-filing citation verification platform for law firms and in-house counsel. Every post on the audit log is written by the Veritas editorial team and cross-checked against the underlying sanctions order, standing order, or published opinion it references. Reporter citations are read in their named volumes. Quotations from court orders are checked against the docket.

The product was built by Andrew Zoll, founder of Veritas, who tracks generative AI sanctions in federal and state courts and turns each documented failure mode into verification logic the scanner runs. Veritas was built after the canonical Mata v. Avianca sanctions order made the verification gap a published failure mode of the bar.

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