I can also confirm that the verification email was still being sent when creating a user with { connection: email, verify_email: false }. I have also disabled the verification email template.
For anyone else trying to figure out how to create a user and prevent the email from being sent, my current hack/solution as to set { connection: email, email_verified: true } when creating the user and then immediately updating the user with { email_verified: false } in order to prevent the initial verification email from being sent. I then send a magic link with a separate request.