a helpless London restaurant was bombarded by fake negative reviews from a ‘AI mafia’ gang to extort £10,000 – and experts warn ‘don’t pray next’.
Nikolas Lemmel says his online reputation firm, Maximatic Media, was called in by the eatery – which does not want to be named – when it found its business was being targeted by online gangsters.
He claims a shell-shocked owner woke up to an avalanche of one-star reviews dragging her away Google rating from 4.9 to 2.3 virtually overnight.
Nikolas says the scathing reviews have accused the independent eatery of being racist, giving guests food poisoning and offering overall poor service.
The owner then received an anonymous email from the ‘review bomb mafia’ who claimed responsibility and demanded £10,000 in cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
Nikolas explains the attackers used AI-powered bot farms around the world to trick Google into thinking they were legitimate customers writing reviews from London on a smartphone.
Maximatic Media said it worked with Google to remove the fake reviews and built a digital strategy that encouraged loyal customers to write positive ones.
They are said to have restored the restaurant’s Google profile to a 4.8 star rating within a month and the business has not been contacted by the gang since.
A helpless London restaurant was bombarded by fake negative reviews from an ‘AI mafia’ gang to extort £10,000 (stock photo)
Nikolas says the ‘AI mafia’ continued to flood the restaurant with negative reviews while they were working with Google to remove them, but over time it decreased.
The owner was encouraged to post a statement on social media detailing what happened and to contact loyal customers with incentives to support her during the difficult time.
New positive reviews helped turn the tide against the attackers and restore the restaurant’s reputation for the ‘grateful’ owner.
Nikolas says he is seeing a ‘frightening’ increase in automated attacks that are putting ‘existence in limbo’.
However, he warned ‘there is not much you can do’ to stop this type of attack.
Nikolas continues: ‘Usually we see competitors trying to diminish the status of a business within the eyes of a local customer base, but this was an outside party.
‘They tried to extort money to remove these reviews. They were like a review bombing mafia.
‘They used bot farms to mask the IP address of the accounts and impersonate a mobile device that was in the vicinity of the restaurant.
‘Normally, if someone were to leave a review from another country it would be easy to get it removed, but in this case it was much more difficult.
‘The owner was very grateful that we got all those reviews and she didn’t give in to the blackmail attempt.
‘There weren’t many precautions she could have taken to prevent the review bombing mafia from tearing down her rating.
Nikolas Lemmel (above) says his online reputation firm, Maximatic Media, was called in by the eatery
‘There’s not much you can do except pray that you don’t fall victim to this kind of attempt. It’s scary.
‘Unless your business is within the IT field, it’s above a lot of people’s pay grades and that’s why it’s hard to work out where it’s coming from or how to stop it.
‘It’s important that people reach out to specialists in these kinds of situations because it’s a tailored approach depending on what’s happening.
“If you see a business getting hundreds of reviews within seconds, that’s a very easy sign that it’s probably being targeted by an automated attack.”
Maximatic Media was founded in 2020 to help small businesses manage their online reputation through targeted PR strategies.
Nikolas says it has recently stepped up its crisis management work to combat online villains who misuse modern technology to target businesses.
He adds: ‘We have seen an increase in these types of situations where businesses repeatedly face the risks of their livelihoods being placed in this limbo zone.
‘It’s something that many websites and platforms are working on making improvements to, but unfortunately the attacks are also becoming more and more complex and advanced, so it’s a never-ending game of catch-up.’
A Google spokesperson said: ‘Our policy makes it clear that reviews must be based on real experiences and information, and we use a combination of technology, expert analysts and community reports to monitor for fraudulent content.
‘When we find scammers trying to trick people, we take action ranging from content removal to account suspension and even litigation.’
Find out more at maximaticmedia.com.
