by Structured Settlement Watchdog®
A new lawsuit in which Amazon accuses more than 1,000 people of offering to post bogus glowing write-ups for as little as $5 apiece might give you pause. The lawsuit was filed in state court in Washington last week and attacks the commissioning of paid, fake reviews that masquerade as testimonials from ordinary people.
Amazon's legal counteroffensive is an aggressive attempt by a major U.S. e-commerce company to fight back.
Its lawsuit alleges that individuals would write five-star reviews about products they never even tried, and plotted with product makers to subvert Amazon safeguards that are meant to bolster confidence in the website's reviews.
About 45 percent of consumers consider product reviews when weighing an online purchase, according to Forrester Research and Two-thirds of shoppers trust consumer opinions online, according to research by Nielsen. The AP opines that a restaurateur might be tempted to pay say $250 for 50 positive reviews online in the hopes of raising that a Yelp rating to secure another booking. The practice is known as "astroturfing" after the fake stuff on your local ballfield.
Here are some examples of how fake or paid reviews have been used to promote companies that buy structured settlements, or brokers for investors that buy structured settlements:
- Einstein Structured Settlements/ JRR Funding used BuyTestimonials.com and Fiverr.com Fairfield Funding was the beneficiary of leads from Einstein Structured Settlements as JRR/Einstein was promoting itself using the fake testimonials.
- David Springer/Sovereign Funding Group of Mt. Airy, MD used Fiverr.com and other paid video testimonial services. In one of the Fiverr.com ads that was shown at David Springer's August 2014 trial in Maryland Federal Court by attorneys for Woodbridge Structured Funding, David Springer was not only given a fake positive, but fraudulently promoted as a lawyer by a $5 character called Old Bitty Grandma who referred to all other lawyers as crooks. Here's another fraudulent Sovereign Funding ad featuring a British Fiverr actress nicknamed Kymmypops. I even discovered that a Florida based SEO specialist who worked with David Springer from 2011-2012 used a paid Fiverr.com testimonial to promote his/her business using Fiverr actor Greg Sheppard that is still online. [Springer, The Mt Airy Faker, was further exposed in 2016 after Springer posted a Rip Off Report complaining about a Romanian bot program Traffic Bots, that he paid $3,000 to aid in posting fake traffic, comments and posts on YouTube, Facebook and other websites]
- Genex Capital has been promoted over and over using fake testimonials and social media roadkill as reported here, and here, including 191 spam comments. One notable shameless self promotional stunt involved (1) a November 2013 press release announcing Assured Annuity.com the retail arm of Genex Capital and (2) two weeks later, another press release announcing that AssuredAnnuity.com was a new "Certified Funder" for Structuredsettlement-quotes.com (SSQ) which was played as an independent business. The press release, in Reuters no less, says "When asked about the new partnership, Genex Capital's CEO, Roger Proctor, answered, "This is a win-win for everyone. I'm very enthusiastic to be working with SSQ". As the result Q2 2015 settlement in the Woodbridge Structured Funding lawsuit against Genex, SSQ and Genex Strategies, Inc., Genex was forced to disclose that SSQ was part of the Genex Capital Group.Genex Capital was made a member of the National Association of Settlement Purchasers (NASP) at a time it it was being promoted by this activity. It is no longer a member.
- US Settlement Funding's Kyle Forster's telephone number can be found on rip off report, pissed consumer and other complaint sites trolling for business with dubious complaints or comment spam on dubious complaints.
- Michael Davis, same method of operation as Kyle Forster. Dubious complaints on complaint sites and comment spam to promote his business.
TripAdvisor says it has a team of 300 people using fraud detection techniques to weed out fake reviews.
"In the first half of 2015 alone we took action against 29 different optimization companies around the world to put a stop to their activity," said spokesman Kevin Carter in the AP story .
Gartner Group estimates that 10 to 15 percent of all online reviews are fake. The AP reports that in 2013, the New York attorney general's office said it had settled cases with 19 companies and secured $350,000 in penalties for fake reviews.
In April 2015, Amazon sued several websites that offered to produce positive reviews. Now it's targeting the actual writers of the reviews — in this case, those who have accounts at the aformentioned Fiverr.com, a site for freelancers looking for work.
In many cases, the writers ask product sellers themselves to write the review, and then they put their name on it, the Amazon lawsuit alleges. At least one would-be reviewer offered to receive an empty envelope from a seller to make it look as if the person had actually bought the product, according to the lawsuit.
The defendants in the lawsuit are identified only by their online handles. Amazon is still working to determine their real names.
Amazon is suing for unspecified damages and an order forcing the users to stop writing fake reviews. The Seattle company said the offenders are liable for breach of contract for violating Amazon's terms of service.
"You never know until the product actually comes to you if a review is real or not," she said. "Online shopping is a leap of faith."