ORLANDO, Fla. – Several Central Florida businesses were recently targeted by extortionists who threatened to damage the companies’ reputations with negative Google reviews unless the owners paid for the online comments to be removed, News 6 has learned.
In each case, dozens of one-star reviews were posted on the companies’ Google advertisement pages with critical comments such as “terrible service” and “rude staff”.
The business owners later received text messages from Pakistani phone numbers demanding money to remove the negative reviews and avoid additional ones from being posted.
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“They start to panic as they see their Google ratings start to plummet that day,” said Kay Dean, a former federal fraud investigator who is the founder of Fake Review Watch “Businesses live or die by these reviews. So bad reviews can cost your business clients.”
Dean, who has been tracking this particular extortion ring for about a month and posted a video about it on her YouTube channel has identified companies all over the U.S. and other countries that have been targeted.
“There’s a whole underworld of this kind of nefarious activity occurring that the public doesn’t ever see on Google,” said Dean. “So many reviews are fake, and it’s very difficult to tell which are real and legitimate and most consumers aren’t going to take the time to get a spreadsheet out and start doing the analysis.”
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Robert Reyes, owner of Straight Paths Moving in Orlando, takes pride in his company’s five-star customer review on Google.
“We hold ourselves to a certain standard to try to get those reviews, so it’s extremely disheartening when someone comes and erases that,” said Reyes, who founded the moving company nearly four years ago.
Earlier this month Reyes received a call from Dean notifying him that his small business was actively being targeted by extortionists.
When Reyes checked his company’s Google advertisement page, he discovered dozens of one-star reviews had recently been submitted by unfamiliar people who were not his customers.
“Straight Paths Moving is nothing but a scam,” read one review.
“Straight Paths Moving showed up hours late without even calling,” another review claimed.
“This company is a joke. I’ll never hire them again,” yet another comment stated.
“They’d pop up ten or fifteen at a time out of nowhere,” said Reyes. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, when is this going to stop?”
Reyes then began receiving text messages on his company’s WhatsApp account from a Pakistani phone number from someone claiming to write bad Google reviews for money.
The text messages included a photo of some of the negative reviews posted about Straight Path Moving.
Reyes said it took Google about 24 hours to remove the bogus ratings after he manually clicked a button on each of the dozens of reviews to report them as fraudulent.
The following day, another Orlando small business was targeted by the same extortion scheme.
“Your heart is in your throat because you’re wondering what’s going on and how do you fix it,” said Tim O’Brien, owner of HomeShield Roofing.
Throughout the morning, O’Brien watched his company’s five-star Google rating drop as one-star reviews began pouring.
The business owner estimates he received about 60 negative Google reviews in four hours.
“You feel helpless because you’ve worked very hard to build this five-star reputation,” said O’Brien. “You want to keep people happy. And then to watch somebody tank it, and you’re not able to do anything about it, is pretty disheartening.”
O’Brien soon began receiving WhatsApp messages from a different Pakistani phone number demanding payment.
“I am doing bad reviews on your business,” one of the messages stated.
“They told me to name the price,” said O’Brien. “I jokingly said, ‘Hey, I’ll give you a hundred bucks.’ Then they replied saying they wanted $150.”
O’Brien and Reyes never sent money to the extortionists, but others have.
“I’ve spoken to several businesses that said they ended up paying,” Dean told News 6. “And you know what happens when you pay? They hit you again.”
Dean noticed that many of the bogus customer reviews are being posted by the same Google account profiles.
For example, a person using the Google profile with the name “Ezra Max” posted a one-star review for Straight Paths Moving.
“Hidden charges, damaged property, and rude staff,” it said.
Although Google eventually removed the fraudulent review, the “Ezra Max” account profile remained active.
The next day, “Ezra Max” posted a negative review for HomeShield Roofing that accused it of being a “bad company”.
“It’s pretty shocking to see that an account remains active when it is clearly being used for extortion purposes,” said Dean. “I can point to a number of them that are still active today that have been posting fake reviews for weeks now.”
Dean believes new legislation is needed to hold tech companies responsible for financial and reputational damage caused by fake online reviews.
“I put much of the blame here on the tech companies like Google,” said Dean. “They’re just not doing enough to self-police and protect the businesses that are paying them.”
Although O’Brien and Reyes were able to report the fraudulent reviews using an online form, both small business owners told News 6 they were unable to speak directly with anyone for assistance.
“There’s no one to talk to at Google,” said Reyes. “You have to hope that they remove the reviews.”
“It’s really frustrating,” O’Brien told News 6. “You’re just watching your business crash, and you have no one to reach out to.”
Representatives from Google did not respond to emails from News 6 offering an opportunity to comment about the extortion scheme that targeted the Orlando businesses.
“Our first line of defense against content that violates our policies is our advanced machine learning models,” a Google website states. “These models excel at identifying patterns to help determine if content is authentic or violates any of our policies. As a result, the majority of fake and policy-violating reviews (over 85%) are blocked or removed before anyone actually sees them.”
Despite those efforts, Dean said she can still find thousands of fake Google reviews every day.
“The bottom line is, they need to devote more resources to policing the review platform because it’s the Wild West,” said Dean.