MIAMI (WSVN) - It has become a troubling trend as online reviewers are hoping to cash in by falsely reviewing highly rated restaurants. One local restaurant became a target and was reached out by the scammer directly.
“You know, it’s extortion,” said co-owner of Boia De and Chef Alex Meyer.
A local Miami restaurant in the Little Haiti neighborhood has become one of the latest targets of a cyber crime.
“They said, ‘We are leaving you negative review. Send us money, and we will stop,'” said Meyer.
Boia De is a newly awarded Michelin star restaurant that found themselves in an difficult position last week.
“I think it was about 6, 7 days ago, a one star Google review popped up. I get the push notification on my phone,” said Meyer.
The restaurant is known to get majority reviews of five stars, therefore the one star review led to Meyer wanting to know why.
“If a one star review pops up, we want to look into it, see if it’s legit, and also see if there are issues on our end that we can improve on,” said Meyer.
He said the review came from a clearly fake account and soon after, he realized there was something suspicious occurring.
“Two more showed up, I think that same day. The next day, two more. I think there’s been 12 or 13 so far,” said Meyer.
Then an email came through, which said, “Unfortunately, negative feedback about your establishment has been left by us and will appear in the future, one review a day … We are begging you to send us a Google Play gift card worth $75.”
Meyer said the same email was sent at least two times, and then another one also popped up in his inbox.
That email said, “We can keep doing this indefinitely. Is $75 worth more to you than a loss to the business? We realize that what we are doing is illegal and unfair, but we have no other choice.”
“Its just such targeted harassment. It’s something we never experienced before,” Meyer said.
Meyer said he reached out to Google and eventually the fake reviews were taken down.
He said thankfully the restaurant wasn’t seriously impacted by these cyber criminals although other restaurants may have not been as lucky.
7News was told Ariete in Coconut Grove is another South Florida restaurant that was also recently awarded a Michelin star and has been dealing with fake online reviews.
“Now we are up to 13 one star reviews in the past 10 days,” said Daniella Vicentini, Director of PR and Communications for Ariete Hospitality Group. “One of them I clicked, and it said they gave a one star review in New York, and the same day, you can see, they reviewed and gave Ariete a one star as well.”
So far they haven’t received any emails asking for money, but Vicentini fears that’s coming.
“For me it’s just a matter of time until we probably receive one of those emails with threats and trying to extort us for something,” said Vicentini.
Vicentini told 7News they have reached out to Google and are still trying to get the situation figured out.
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