Restaurant hit by Google overview gangsters demanding £10k to cease savage scores

A ‘mafia’ of AI bots demanded thousands from a restaurant owner and threatened to bombard it even further with shocking reviews on Google if staff didn’t pay up

A “review-bombing” mafia of naughty AI bots bombarded a helpless restaurant owner with negative reviews and held her to ransom.

The restaurant owner, who does not wish to be named, had to call in the help of a PR firm when she found her hard work undone as her restaurant went from a 4.9 rating on Google to 2.3 in a very short period.

“Pray you’re not next”, experts warned after the establishment was told they would have to hand over £10,000 in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin or face further awful reviews that accused staff of racism, offering shoddy service and giving guests food poisoning.

Nikolas Lemmel, who works for the online reputation firm Maximatic Media, said they were called in over an “extortion attempt”.

Nikolas said: “Usually we see competitors attempting to decrease the standing of a business within the eyes of a local customer base but this was an outside party. They were trying to extort money to remove these reviews. They were like a review-bombing mafia.”

Nikolas explained there has been a “scary” rise in automated attacks just like this, where AI bot farms trick Google into thinking they are regular customers giving online reviews.

Google says it has a “combination of technology, expert analysts, and community reports” to fight off bots that Nikolas says put “livelihoods in limbo”. Nikolas also says they were able to build the rating back up to a 4.8 but the fake online mob its still up to its old tricks.

“Usually if someone was to leave a review from a different country then it would be easy to get it removed but in this case it was a lot more difficult,” Nikolas said. “She was extremely thankful that we got all of those reviews down and she didn’t succumb to the extortion attempt.

“There weren’t many precautions she could have taken to stop the review-bombing mafia from demolishing her rating. There isn’t much you can do other than pray you don’t become a victim of this sort of attempt. It’s scary.”

He added: “We’ve seen a rise of these sorts of situations where businesses are repeatedly facing these risks of having their livelihoods put into this limbo zone.

“It is something many websites and platforms are working on making improvements in but sadly the attacks are also becoming increasingly complex and advanced too so it’s a never-ending game of catch-up.”

A spokesperson for Google said: “Our policies clearly state 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 mislead people, we take action ranging from content removal to account suspension and even litigation.”

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