What This Story Is About
- Overseas criminals are targeting Middle Tennessee businesses with an extortion scheme that hijacks Google reviews.
Why It Matters
- Google reviews directly impact a business’s reputation and revenue. For small businesses like wedding photographers, restaurants, and service providers, online reviews can make or break their livelihood.
What Happens Next
- Business owners who experience this extortion can report fake reviews to Google through a specific form linked at the end of this story.
For Context
- According to reviewfraud.org, this extortion scheme is happening to businesses across the country, not just in Middle Tennessee. The criminals are believed to be operating from India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.
CENTERVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – Overseas criminals are hijacking Google reviews of Middle Tennessee businesses, demanding payment or threatening to destroy online reputations with fake negative reviews.
Christina Hix, a Centerville wedding photographer, experienced the extortion scheme firsthand when scammers targeted her business last November.
“I have 187 five-star reviews,” Hix said of her photography business, Trace Creek Manor Photo and Video. “I was like, whoa, what is happening?”
How the scam works
Hix received a text from someone claiming to be a freelancer offering to remove negative reviews for $100 each.
“And I just felt like something was fishy about it,” Hix said. “I didn’t feel comfortable.”
When she refused to pay, the harassment escalated.
“He was blowing up my phone with messages, constant messages, calling me,” Hix said.
Fake reviews flood business page
After Hix declined to pay, one-star reviews suddenly appeared on her Google business page.
“It says, bad experience with Trace Creek Manor Fine Art Wedding Photography. They lost our wedding photos and were unprofessional,” Hix said, reading one of the fake reviews.
“I was like, whoa, what is happening? And there’s like a few reviews that were obviously fake, weird names. And I was like, it has to be this guy,” she said.
The scammer then sent threatening messages: “I CAN’T STOP MY TEAM. THEY ARE GOING TO DO MORE NEGATIVE..I JUST POSTED 3 – BUT I DON’T KNOW HOW MANY MORE THEY WILL DO…YOU DIDN’T PAY ME…IF YOU ARE SMART, I AM TOO.”
Expert calls it extortion
“He for sure hijacked my account,” Hix said. “I said, please remove these reviews. This is my livelihood. This is my family you’re hurting in the long run because it’s my business.”
Jason Brown, who runs the website reviewfraud.org, said the scheme amounts to extortion.
“It’s straight up extortion,” Brown said.
Brown said businesses across the country are having their Google reviews hijacked.
“You get stuck with like 27 fake negative reviews,” Brown said. “And it’s going to take like an act of Congress to figure out how do I get these removed, right?”
Google’s response questioned
Brown said Google bears responsibility for addressing the problem.
“Yeah, Google does have responsibility,” Brown said when asked about the company’s role. “Or can Google actually figure out how to prevent 37 negative reviews all coming in within a certain period of time?”
In a statement to WSMV4 Investigates, a spokesperson for Google wrote, “We do not tolerate scams on Google Maps and work around the clock to monitor for suspicious activity. We’ve removed these fake reviews and suspended the accounts responsible.”
For clarity, reviews are often found on Google Maps when a business is searched.
Business owner fights back
Hix got online and asked her contacts to report the one-star reviews as fake. A journalist from out of state also emailed Google on her behalf.
She’s not sure what worked, but the fake reviews were eventually removed and the texting stopped. However, the experience left lasting effects.
“You have no control. You feel powerless,” Hix said.
Reviewfraud.org believes these criminals are working out of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
According to Google, here is more information about what the company is doing to prevent this type of extortion:
- Our advanced AI and expert analysts work around the clock to monitor for suspicious activity and remove policy-violating content. As part of our ongoing investments to fight bad actors, we rolled out a new way for merchants to directly report extortion attempts to us so that we can take swift action against malicious actors.
- You can learn more about our progress here and here.
- Thanks to our advanced machine learning algorithms, we blocked or removed more than 240 million policy-violating reviews from 2024, the vast majority of which were removed before they were seen.
- Our improved detection system blocked or removed more than 70 million policy-violating edits to places on Maps. We also removed or blocked more than 12 million fake Business Profiles.
- We placed posting restrictions on more than 900,000 accounts that repeatedly violated our policies.
If this happens to you, here is the link that alerts Google to what’s called “merchant extortion.”
If there’s something you want us to know for this story, please email jeremy.finley@wsmv.com .
Copyright 2026 WSMV. All rights reserved.
