Amazon Files Suit Against 1,000+ People Who Wrote Fake Product Reviews

Posted on October 19, 2015

Amazon has filed a lawsuit in Seattle against more than 1,000 people who wrote fake product reviews on Amazon.com for money. In a new lawsuit Amazon alleges that people are being paid around $5 for each fake review for a particular product.

Sellers can purchase as many fake reviews as they like from a number of sites, many of whom were shut down by Amazon.com in an April lawsuit. The fake reviews aren't all positive. You can buy fake terrible reviews to try to take out a competitor. Of course, this is not legal as such actions constitute fraud on consumers under federal consumer protection laws. The number of fake reviews has gotten so high that Amazon says its reputation as a retailer is being damaged by "false, misleading and inauthentic" reviews.

Most of the reviews were purchased on the website Fiverr.com, which is working with Amazon and is not being sued by the online retailer. Amazon's internal investigation showed that the fake reviewers used multiple accounts from unique IP addresses to avoid detection. Reportedly, Amazon investigators went undercover and actually purchased a number of fake reviews to learn how they did it. The fake reviewers offered to avoid detection by using multiple accounts from unique IP addresses.

The fake reviewers have not been named. When Amazon gets their names from the ISPs, they will be added to the lawsuit. As the case goes forward it will no doubt be revealed whether any authors or publishers will get caught in the case. You can read the lawsuit here.