A London restaurant found itself under siege by an 'AI mafia' gang that bombarded it with fake negative reviews, demanding £10,000 to stop the attack.
Experts are warning that this sinister scheme could target more businesses next, urging, 'Pray you're not next.'
Nikolas Lemmel, founder of online reputation firm Maximatic Media, shared that the unnamed eatery turned to his company for help after being overwhelmed by the assault.
A flood of one-star reviews caused the restaurant's Google rating to nosedive from an impressive 4.9 to a dismal 2.3 overnight, leaving the owner shocked and desperate for a solution.
'AI Mafia' Extorts London Restaurant
Nikolas stated that the malicious reviews falsely accused the independent restaurant of racism, food poisoning, and generally poor service.
Subsequently, the owner received an anonymous email from the 'review-bombing mafia', claiming responsibility and demanding a £10,000 ransom in Bitcoin cryptocurrency.
Nikolas revealed that the attackers orchestrated a sophisticated global operation, utilising AI-powered bot farms to flood Google with fake reviews.
These bots were designed to mimic the geolocation and user behaviour of genuine London-based customers accessing the internet via smartphones, thus circumventing Google's review verification systems.
Maximatic Media collaborated with Google to remove fraudulent reviews and implemented a digital strategy to encourage positive reviews from loyal customers.
In a remarkable turnaround, Maximatic Media rehabilitated the restaurant's Google profile, elevating its rating back to 4.8 stars within a month.
Restaurant Bombarded With Fake Negative Reviews
Since then, the terrifying silence from the 'review-bombing mafia' has provided much-needed relief, per DailyMail.
Nikolas explained that the 'AI mafia' continued to bombard the restaurant with negative reviews even as they worked with Google to remove them.
However, over time, the frequency of these attacks gradually diminished. The owner was urged to share her story on social media to counter the negative narrative and openly discuss the ordeal.
Furthermore, she was encouraged to incentivise loyal customers to demonstrate their support and help her navigate this difficult time.
An influx of new positive reviews ultimately helped the restaurant overcome the attack, restoring its reputation and leaving the grateful owner relieved.
Livelihoods In Limbo
Nikolas expressed concern over a 'scary' increase in automated attacks, warning that these incidents can jeopardise livelihoods and that limited options exist to prevent such attacks.
'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,' he continued. 'They were trying to extort money to remove these reviews. They were like a review-bombing mafia.'
'They were using bot farms to mask the IP address of the accounts and emulate a mobile device that was in the area of the restaurant. 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.'
'The owner 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.'
'Pray You're Not Next'
'There isn't much you can do other than pray you don't become a victim of this sort of attempt. It's scary. Unless your business is within the IT field, this is 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 people reach out to specialists in these sorts of situations because it's a tailored approach depending on what's happening. If you see a business get hundreds of reviews within seconds, then that's a very easy tell-tale sign that it's probably being targeted by an automated attack,' said Nikolas.
Founded in 2020, Maximatic Media specialises in helping small businesses manage their online reputation through targeted PR strategies.
Recently, Nikolas has expanded the company's focus, ramping up crisis management services to combat online adversaries who exploit modern technology to target businesses.
