The “review bombing” extortion scam is happening locally and across the nation, according to the Better Business Bureau of Central Ohio.
POWELL, Ohio — A Powell business owner said he was flooded by bad Google reviews from a scammer, who asked for $5,000 to remove them, in part of a negative review extortion scam that Google is warning business owners about nationwide.
Robert Koehler opened his Zoom Drain Columbus franchise about a year and a half ago, and said business has been going well. That is why he was confused when he received a string of one-star reviews from customers he never worked with.
“It started off as a panic,” Koehler said.
The reviews came in one by one, spaced just minutes apart.
“We thought we are getting attacked, our reputation is getting attacked,” Koehler said.
The reviews came from accounts with names including “Yooin Yooin”, “Mooin Mooin” and “Jones Jones”. Several of them listed concerns with things like tiling and grout which are services Koehler does not provide.
“I was like, ‘Why? Why is this happening? What is someone to gain off of slandering a business for no real reason’,” he said.
Then, the final review from “Gooin Gooin” directed Koehler to call a Pakistani phone number in his profile to “delete all reviews”. He said he called the phone number, and the voice on the other line asked him to pay $5,000 to have the reviews deleted.
“I was more in shock they would ask for that amount of money from a small business,” he said.
Instead of paying up, Koehler took to Facebook, asking friends and neighbors to report the reviews as fake. He said Google removed them within a day. He also reported the attempted extortion to the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Agency and Internet Crimes Complaint Center, since it was an international phone number.
This “review bombing” extortion scam is happening locally and across the nation, according to the Better Business Bureau of Central Ohio.
“The way this scam works is a business is flooded with negative one star reviews in a very short period of time, just a lot of reviews and shortly thereafter they are contacted usually through a third party app and they ask for a ransom to stop the reviews and if they don’t pay they say they will escalate the reviews,” said Judy Dollison, President and Ceo of the BBB of Central Ohio.
Dollison said business owners should not engage with these scammers and definitely should not pay the ransom.
“If the business does pay, it often doesn’t stop the reviews the scammers know they are willing to pay and they double down,” she said.
Dollison said to take screenshots, and hold on to the information from scammers, to make a report to Google.
Koehler said online reviews are essential for a business like his, and he is thankful he was able to have the reviews removed so quickly.
“It can derail your business entirely, when you are dealing with such a trust industry of going into people’s homes, that is their sanctuary and a reputation review that is what everyone checks when you are looking at home service businesses,” he said.
Google has recently rolled out a new tool for business owners to report these negative review extortion schemes in an online form.
