I’ve been blocked from using the Gemini API on a paid project for over a week now, and I’ve isolated this down to what looks like an account-level trust/abuse flag, not a project or key issue. Posting here because the in-app feedback tool and Cloud Assist chat haven’t gotten a human response.
Summary: Every paid image-generation call on project gen-lang-client-04992700.. (“Default Gemini Project”) returns permission denied. This happens across both API keys on the project (ST.MICHEL-studio, Default Gemini API Key) and across three different models (gemini-3.1-flash-image, gemini-3.1-flash-lite-image, gemini-3.1-flash-lite). Usage/quota dashboards show $0 spend — this isn’t a spend cap or rate limit. Billing is active and correctly linked (Tier 1 Prepay), and a $10 payment on Sept 8 went through successfully.
What I tested to isolate it: To check whether the block was scoped to that one project, I tried creating a brand-new Google Cloud project from AI Studio. Result: "Failed to create project, The request is suspicious. Please try again." I then tried generating a new API key on a completely different, pre-existing project (“My First Project”). Same result: "Failed to generate API key, The request is suspicious. Please try again."
That tells me this isn’t project- or key-specific — it’s blocking any new resource creation on this Cloud identity, which is almost certainly the same mechanism behind the permission-denied generation calls.
Likely trigger: On Sept 8, this account had a free-trial billing account created and converted to paid within about 3 minutes, followed shortly by a Google Account recovery event and a new sign-in. That combination looks like it tripped an automated fraud/abuse review. I checked Google Payments Center — no restriction shown there, so this looks scoped to Cloud/AI Studio specifically.
I never received a suspension notice or an appeal link — this is a silent block, not a formal suspension, so the usual Appeals flow isn’t available to me. I’d really appreciate a manual review of this account. Happy to provide any further verification needed. Project ID: gen-lang-client-04992700…