Florida woman arrested after Anthropic flagged her Claude chats

A Florida woman who used Claude as a personal diary was arrested after the chatbot flagged messages about a threat against a sheriff’s office.

Carli Michelle Heller, 30, of Bonita Springs, allegedly wrote in a Claude conversation on September 26 that she was going to “shoot up” the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. A message the next day said she had obtained a new gun, according to an arrest report cited by WINK News. Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno told WINK that Heller said she used AI like a “diary.”

The report says Anthropic’s safety systems monitor conversations for key phrases and potentially threatening content. In this case, the messages were escalated to a human review team, which contacted law enforcement. Deputies went to Heller’s home and arrested her on September 30.

Heller’s Claude messages were later used as evidence in the case. She was charged with making a written threat of violence, a second-degree felony under Florida law.