Scammers blackmail Southampton business to remove 100s of fake Google reviews for $5 a time

Watch: ITV News Meridian's Richard Slee reports.

The boss of a Southampton telecommunications company has said he felt powerless after scammers flooded his business page with "fake" negative reviews.

The scammers, believed to be based in Pakistan, allegedly blackmailed Circle.cloud, offering to remove them for $5 per review.

Over the last five years, the firm - which employs 60 people in the city - has performed well online - with a 4.99 star Google rating.

It received an average of just one negative Google review a year, but managing director Axel Molist Cordina says it suddenly received an influx of negative reviews, with messages demanding money to remove them.

He said: "We suddenly got around 20 negative reviews a day over the course of a week, something that's never happened before.

"We looked up every single name of the people leaving the reviews, but couldn't ever find a customer it related to. We contacted each individual one, to ask what we had done wrong and ask them to identify themselves, but no-one came forward.

"We flagged them as spam to Google, but a few days later they replied to say they couldn't find anything with the reviews that was against their policy so they will remain."

Watch: Managing Director, Axel Molist Cordina, explains what happened.

The company has seen appointments cancelled and customers pulling out after reading the negative reviews.

Mr Cordina said: "We could have agreed to pay more money and have those reviews removed, but what's to stop them leaving more reviews?

"So we decided against dealing with the scammers, and take a different approach."

The firm has now been contacted by Google and the reviews have been removed.

According to the search engine company, more than 95 million "policy-violating reviews" were blocked or removed in 2021, and more than 1 million reviews reported directly to them were taken down.

A spokesperson for Google said: “We invest significantly in building technologies and instituting practices that help people find reliable information on Google.

"Our policies clearly state reviews must be based on real experiences and information, and we closely monitor 24/7 for fraudulent content, using a combination of people and technology.

"Staying a step ahead of scammers is a constant battle, and in this case our teams are continuing to investigate, removing content and blocking accounts associated with malicious activity.”