Verifying that the reference you cite actually exists is the absolute minimum standard for academic work. It is not optional, not something to skip because of a deadline, and not something to outsource blindly to hallucination-prone AI.

If someone cannot meet that bar, they have no business publishing research papers. I have written academic papers myself, and I find it astonishing that people are trying to justify this as if it were some understandable workflow mistake. At that point it is simply slop with academic formatting. Post it on a blog or somewhere else, but do not put it into the scientific record.

A one-year ban is not a lifetime ban. Maybe six months would also have been enough, but the author can use that time to think about whether they should verify references next time — and to manually check every other citation.