“They should report fake reviews to the platform where they were posted, including evidence of communications with the scammers, to try to get them taken down.”
“Businesses should not pay scammers,” her statement said. Juliana Gruenwald, a spokeswoman for the Federal Trade Commission, said the agency would not comment on this specific scheme, but did say in a statement that “posting fake reviews would be a violation of the FTC Act.” Its credit card companies were also able to reverse the fraudulent charges, meaning there was no lasting financial harm, owners told the Tribune.Īnd while there might not be a tangible effect yet - the 11 one-star reviews posted about EL Ideas over the past four days, for example, account for just under 4% of the restaurant’s total 294 reviews on Google - the impact of negative reviews online can be daunting. Bien Trucha Group’s Facebook account was recently hacked, and owners were stuck watching as thousands of dollars in advertising were charged to the restaurant’s credit cards.Īfter two weeks of fruitless efforts to contact Facebook, and a June 29 article in the Chicago Tribune, Bien Trucha’s access to its three affected Facebook pages was restored beginning June 30. This isn’t the first time scammers have targeted Chicago-area restaurants in the past few months. And restaurants in San Francisco say they’re being targeted with the same ploy, according to Eater San Francisco. “We sincerely apologize for our actions, and would not want to harm your business, but we have no other choice.”Įver restaurant confirmed Thursday it received two emails demanding $75 in gift cards to make the bad reviews stop, but declined to comment otherwise. “We hope that this amount will not be critical for you,” the email says of the $75 gift cards. The sender claims they are from India and will resell the gift cards at a lower price for profit.
Several of the targeted restaurants received identical emails claiming responsibility for the negative reviews and stating the scammers need the Google Play gift cards because they “see no other way to survive,” according to one of the emails, which the Tribune reviewed.
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