Why does it run the API call twice when there is a sleep in the code??? (PHP/Laravel)

public function createall()
{

    $users = User::orderBy('id', 'ASC')
           ->where('server', 'Demo')
           ->where('enable', '1')
           ->where('mt4_account', '!=', 0)
           ->take(4)
           ->get();
    
    foreach ($users as $user) {
        $server = Server::where('Serverdesc', $user->server)->first();

        $post = [
            'server' => $server->serverdesc,
            'api_key' => 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',
            'login' => intval($user->mt4_account),
        ];
        $datapost = json_encode($post);

// initialize cURL
        $ch = curl_init();

// set options
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/closetrades");
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "POST");
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $datapost);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array(
                'Content-Type: application/json',
                'Content-Length: ' . strlen($datapost))
        );
        $result = curl_exec($ch);

        curl_close($ch);

        sleep(5);   

        $ptr = fsockopen($server->serveraddress, $server->serverport);
        // Checking errors
        if (!$ptr) {
            dump("Connection error");
            exit;
        }
        $useracc = $user->mt4_account;
        $userpass = $user->mt4_pass;

        $request = "WUSERINFO-login=" . $useracc . "|password=" . $userpass . "\nQUIT\n";
        fputs($ptr, $request);

        while (!feof($ptr)) {
            // Reading the string of symbols
            $line = fgets($ptr, 128);
            // End of result transmission flag
            if ($line == "end\r\n") {
                fclose($ptr);
                break;
            }
            // Processing
            $data = (explode(chr(9), $line));

            if (substr($data[0], 0, 4) == "Bala") {
                $balance = substr($data[0], 9, strlen($data[0]) - 11);
                dump($data, $useracc, $userpass, $balance);
            }
        }
}
}

With the sleep function in the code, the API call above it, and apparently only the API call, gets executed twice for every record. I see the API write out the results on the terminal window of the server, so I'm absolutely sure it gets executed double.

I remove the sleep function and the API call gets executed once for every record. The terminal window on the server shows the right amount of calls...

The rest of the code, for example the ones that dumps the variables, gets printed only once, so apparently that part gets executed only once...

Why? How? I'm dumbfounded...