Small Businesses Targeted In Negative Review Extortion Scam

Small businesses nationwide are being blackmailed in a scam that experts say has grown into a cottage industry.

Hit with a flood of fake negative reviews, targeted businesses can either pay the extortionist to take them down or be slammed with more. Even giving in to the demands doesn’t always end the negative reviews that can sink a business’s reputation overnight.

The scam exists across all professions — dog trainers, building contractors, wedding DJs, lawyers, dentists, surgeons, moving companies and “you name it,” according to Kay Dean, a former federal investigator who created the industry watchdog Fake Review Watch several years ago after she chose a psychiatric practice based on Google and Yelp reviews she later learned were fake.

Businesses depend more heavily than ever on online reviews on sites such as Google, Yelp and Amazon for reputation building. A growing number of consumers also consult online reviews before making purchases, and star ratings are an important measure of quality, according to surveys.

“Making it as a small business in 2025 is hard enough, but it is doubly hard when Google allows extortionists from halfway around the world to ruin your online reputation,” Dean said in a Fake Review Watch video.

A Game Of Whack-A-Mole

Natalia Piper, who has a general contracting business in Los Angeles, told The New York Times that she received a text message from a phone number in Pakistan in June that read:

“Someone has ordered me to post a negative review on your business. Got an order to post 20 reviews.”

Piper was ensnared in the scam when she replied to inquire who had placed the order. She eventually paid removal fees totaling $250 to the fraudsters, whose phone numbers identified them as being in Pakistan and Bangladesh to remove the reviews, only to have more pop up.

Google finally removed them, Piper told The Times, but not before her star rating had fallen from 5.0 to 3.5.

“It took me eight years to get my reputation in the market, and one guy can damage it in one day,” she said.

Georgia moving company owner Nick Betourney played a similar game of whack-a-mole.

The 5-star rating for his business was threatened in a WhatsApp message. The New York Times reporter Stuart A. Thompson wrote that the sender, Rashid Ghallu, admitted he was under contract with an unspecified client to post 20 negative reviews for $100.

Betourney said the reviews were filled with “crazy, elaborate stuff,” such as boxes smashed in front of customers. Google took some of them down, but others appeared in their place.

‘It’s Like The Wild West’

Dean said in a Fake Review Watch video that her six-year investigation showed fraud is occurring at alarming levels, deceiving millions of consumers and creating unfair competition for thousands of honest businesses.

“It’s like the Wild West, and there is no sheriff,” she said.

Jonathan Towner got in touch with Dean after his San Jose HVAC business, Silicon Valley Comfort, was slammed with 20 1-star Google reviews in a single day.

Other San Jose businesses were “tagged lightly” in the attack, Towner said in his message to Dean, “but I got the full ambush.”

These fraudsters often hide behind “sketchy locked profiles” that prevent others from vetting their authenticity and reviewing their past activity and make it difficult for others to discern if it comes from a legitimate customer, Dean said.

Her investigation revealed that in a single day, the reviewers who had trashed Towner’s business also left 1-star reviews for an air conditioning business in New York City, a mover in Chicago, a dental practice in Switzerland. More than 150 businesses around the country have been targeted with fake negative reviews, according to Dean.

“There’s a whole underworld of nefarious activity that’s underpinning what you see online that people just don’t know of,” Dean says. “These businesses are being extorted and Google isn’t doing enough about it.”

Tech companies, including Amazon, Yelp and Google, have sued fake review brokers they accuse of peddling counterfeit reviews on their sites. The companies say their technology has blocked or removed a huge swath of suspect reviews and suspicious accounts.

Google, in particular, says it actively blocks 85 percent of fake reviews through a combination of AI and algorithms, and has implemented new measures to combat fraudulent content on its platforms.

However, some experts say Google and other tech companies could be doing more.

‘Really, Really Good Tool For Review Scammers’

Other investigations support Dean’s findings.

The Transparency Company, a tech company and watchdog group that uses software to detect fake reviews, told The Associated Press that it started to see AI-generated reviews show up in large numbers in mid-2023, and they have multiplied ever since.

In a report released last December, the company analyzed 73 million reviews in three sectors: home, legal and medical services. Nearly 14 percent of the reviews were likely fake, and the company expressed a “high degree of confidence” that 2.3 million reviews were partly or entirely AI-generated.

Maury Blackman, who now leads the Transparency Company, told The AP that AI is “just a really, really good tool for these review scammers.”

DoubleVerify also said it was observing a “significant increase” in mobile phone and smart TV apps with reviews crafted by generative AI, according to The AP. The reviews were often used to deceive customers into installing apps that could hijack devices or run ads constantly, the company said.

FTC Rule ‘Not Nearly Enough’

With phony, manipulated reviews polluting the marketplace, the Federal Trade Commission implemented a new rule last year that prohibits businesses from creating and posting fake or deceptive reviews, including those generated by AI or that are materially misleading.

It also bans companies from paying for positive or negative reviews, and from suppressing negative reviews using threats or intimidation. The rule gives the FTC the ability to impose civil penalties that can be more than $53,000 per occurrence, and establishes new protections against practices like creating fake independent review sites or using fake social media indicators.

The rule didn’t add any new requirements for Google, Yelp and other review platforms, which already have broad protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act for content posted by their users.

Businesses can report the fake reviews, but that’s where customer service ends. There’s no way for them to speak directly with someone at Google about taking down reviews from phony accounts.

“Their efforts thus far are not nearly enough,” Dean told The AP last year. “If these tech companies are so committed to eliminating review fraud on their platforms, why is it that I, one individual who works with no automation, can find hundreds or even thousands of fake reviews on any given day?”

How To Spot Fake Reviews

Researchers say that until more is done, consumers should be on the lookout for possible warning signs.

Overly enthusiastic or negative reviews and jargon that repeats the product’s full name are red flags. Identifying AI is harder, as a Yale study by Balázs Kovács found people can’t distinguish AI-generated from human-written reviews. The study also noted that shorter texts, common in online reviews, may fool some AI detectors.

However, there are some “AI tells” that online shoppers and service seekers should keep in mind. Panagram Labs says reviews written with AI are typically longer, highly structured and include “empty descriptors,” such as generic phrases and attributes. The writing also tends to include clichés like “the first thing that struck me” and “game-changer.”

To spot AI-written reviews, Panagram Labs suggests looking for “AI tells” — longer, highly structured reviews with “empty descriptors” and clichés like “the first thing that struck me” or “game-changer.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Also On Patchw

• ‘Too Trusting’ Woman Scammed Out Of Her Life Savings: “I didn’t want to believe that there are people out there who could be this evil and do something like this” she said.
• As Shutdown Grinds On And Flight Cancellations Mount, Know Your Rights: The shutdown is creating more difficult staffing problems than a single airline might experience; it affects how entire airports function.
• Spam, Scam And Robocalls At 6-Year High Despite Laws To Stop Them: So far in 2025, 44% of phone companies have fully installed mandated software and adopted anti-robocall policies; that’s down from 2024.
• With Turkey Prices Up 40%, These Retailers Offer $4 Thanksgiving Meals: Turkey prices soar amid bird flu, trade wars and other economic pressures; Aldi and Walmart are early announcers of Thanksgiving meal deals.