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Anthropic Sends $16.6 Million 'Phantom Bill' to Free-Tier User in Korea

·2026.07.13 11:31

Key point

An incident occurred in which Anthropic sent a mistaken invoice worth tens of millions of dollars to a free-tier API user in Korea who had zero usage.

Details

A Korean user on Anthropic's free plan received a massive invoice totaling $16.6 million (about 22 billion won), despite having absolutely no API usage.

The user reportedly received the invoice twice via Stripe, with the amount increasing tenfold within 24 hours of the first invoice. What made the situation more confusing was that the invoice was sent not through a phishing email, but through Anthropic's official domain and official payment system.

Currently, the user's bank has rejected all attempts at the overseas payment, so no actual financial damage has occurred. However, Anthropic has yet to provide an official response as to whether the incident was caused by a security breach, AI hallucination, or a technical billing error.

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