The cases / Consulting / cybersecurity
EY Canada pulled a loyalty-fraud report built on a McKinsey report that doesn't exist
Report published late 2025; GPTZero findings May 14, 2026.
What the AI said
Cited 'McKinsey & Company - Loyalty Economics Report (2022)' estimating $200 billion in unredeemed rewards. Elsewhere it gave $200 billion as the size of the whole loyalty-points market, with 30-50% unused.
What was actually true
GPTZero found no such McKinsey report. The two $200B claims can't both be true. In the resources table, 'almost all of the URLs are broken or fake, and more than half of the titles don't correspond to real sources'.
Cost or impact
EY removed the report and is 'reviewing the circumstances'. GPTZero found the report already cited in a Canberra Times article syndicated to 60+ Australian papers.
Who caught it
GPTZero researchers Om Ogale, Paul Esau and Alex Cui.
Check that would have caught it Our analysis
source citation. Every number traces to a real document; the market-size figures should reconcile with each other.
This is our judgment, not something the sources say. How we assign it.
Sources
- gptzero.mehttps://gptzero.me/investigations/ey
- indianexpress.comhttps://indianexpress.com/article/technology/artificial-intelligence/ey-withdraws-report-over-ai-hallucination-errors-fake-data-and-citations-10694245/
- consulting.cahttps://www.consulting.ca/news/5023/ey-canada-takes-down-study-after-apparent-ai-hallucinations
Links last checked Oct 24, 2026. If something here is wrong, send a correction.