A down-and-out London restaurant has been bombarded with fake negative reviews by an ‘AI mafia’ gang out to extort £10,000, and experts warn ‘pray you’re not next’.
Nikolas Lemmel says his online reputation company, Maximatic Media, was called by the restaurant, which does not wish to reveal its name, when it discovered its business was being targeted by online gangsters.
It claims a shocked homeowner woke up to discover that an avalanche of one-star reviews had dragged her Google rating from 4.9 to 2.3 virtually overnight.
Nikolas says scathing reviews accused the independent restaurant of being racist, giving customers food poisoning and providing poor service across the board.
The owner then received an anonymous email from the ‘review bombing mafia’ who claimed responsibility and demanded £10,000 in Bitcoin cryptocurrency.
Nikolas explains that the attackers were using AI-powered bot farms around the world to trick Google into thinking they were legitimate customers writing reviews from London on a smartphone.
Maximic Media said it worked with Google to remove fake reviews and created a digital strategy that encouraged loyal customers to write positive reviews.
They allegedly restored the restaurant’s Google profile to a 4.8 star rating within a month and the gang have not contacted the establishment since.
A defenseless London restaurant was bombarded with fake negative reviews by an ‘AI mafia’ gang to extort it for £10,000 (file image)
Nikolas says the ‘AI mafia’ continued to flood the restaurant with negative reviews while they worked with Google to remove them, but over time they subsided.
The owner was encouraged to post a statement on social media describing what had 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 as a “grateful” owner.
Nikolas says he is seeing a “scary” rise in automated attacks that put “livelihoods in limbo.”
However, he warned that “there is not much that can be done” to stop these types of attacks.
Nikolas continues: ‘We normally see competitors trying to diminish a company’s reputation in the eyes of a local customer base, but this was an external party.
‘They were trying to extort money to remove these reviews. They were like a mafia that bombards reviews.
‘They were using bot farms to mask the IP address of the accounts and emulate a mobile device that was in the restaurant area.
‘Usually if someone left a review from a different country it would be easy to remove it, but in this case it was much harder.
‘The owner was very grateful that we received all that criticism and that she did not succumb to the extortion attempt.
‘There weren’t many precautions she could have taken to prevent the review bombing mob from demolishing her rating.
Nikolas Lemmel (above) says the restaurant called its online reputation company, Maximatic Media.
‘There is not much you can do other than pray that you do not become a victim of this type of attempt. It’s scary.
‘Unless your business is within the IT field, this is above many people’s pay levels and so it is difficult to determine where it is coming from or how to stop it.
‘It is important that people turn to specialists in these types of situations because it is a personalized approach depending on what is happening.
“If you see a business receiving hundreds of reviews in seconds, that’s a very clear sign that it’s probably being targeted by an automated attack.”
Maximic Media was founded in 2020 to help small businesses manage their online reputation through targeted public relations strategies.
Nikolas says he has recently stepped up his crisis management work to combat online villains who abuse modern technology to attack companies.
He adds: ‘We have seen an increase in these types of situations where companies are repeatedly faced with the risk of their livelihoods being left in this limbo zone.
“It’s something that many websites and platforms are working to improve, but unfortunately attacks are also becoming increasingly complex and advanced, so it’s a never-ending game of catch-up.”
A Google spokesperson said: “Our policies clearly state that reviews should be based on real experiences and information, and we use a combination of technology, expert analysts, and community reporting to monitor fraudulent content.”
“When we find scammers trying to scam people, we take action ranging from content removal to account suspension and even litigation.”
Get more information at maximicmedia.com.