CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Phillip Foss owns El Ideas, an upscale American restaurant in Chicago’s Douglas Park neighborhood, and he said his restaurant was among those targeted by scammers in an extortion scheme that revolved around one-star Google Maps reviews earlier this month.
The attacks went like this: Scammers claiming to be from India would hit restaurants with one-star reviews on a daily basis. After some time had passed, the scammers would email restaurants requesting Google Play gift cards in exchange for taking down the reviews.
Over the past few weeks, offenders have hit many restaurants, not only in Chicago, but all over the United States. Sam Toia, with the Illinois Restaurant Association (IRA), said scammers mostly targeted restaurants that were featured in the annual Michelin Guide.
Foss said the scammers weren’t his only problem, though. He said his team had little support from Google as they tried to address the reviews.
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“It was just a feeling of helplessness,” Foss said. “It didn’t feel like there was much we could do other than try to get in touch with Google. When that was proving to be pretty fruitless, it felt more like we didn’t have a lot of recourse here.”
Although Foss said most of the negative reviews have been taken down, his team is still receiving emails of extortion. He said he doesn’t know if Google has taken steps to prevent this.
“I think it was pretty obvious that there were [no protections] in place,” Foss said. “I can understand that they didn’t see it coming, but the response to it was, in my opinion, less than adequate.”
To Foss, this situation was even more frustrating given that restaurants are just coming out of what he described as a brutal few years.
“I’m like, ‘Are you kidding? You’re coming after restaurants right now? Go after Google. They’ve got the money, you can extort them,’" Foss said. "It seems so ridiculous that they’re coming after the restaurant industry right now after these last couple of years.”
A Google Maps spokesperson said the company’s teams are working “around the clock to thwart these attacks, remove fraudulent reviews, and put protections on business profiles that may have been affected.”
“We encourage users and business owners to flag suspicious activity to us, which helps us keep the information on Maps accurate and reliable,” the spokesperson said.
James Curtis, marketing director of the Chicago-based Four Star Restaurant Group, said his team did flag fake reviews at one of its restaurants, The Perch Kitchen and Tap. They went days without a response from Google.
“I have a lot of concerns about this happening again,” Curtis said.
Toia said his office has been in contact with Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Illinois Attorney General’s Office in the hopes that they can influence federal authorities to crack down on scammers.
"The hope is that once scammers know the feds are involved, they'll back off," Toia said.
Toia said any restaurants that are targeted by these scammers should not engage, and should instead report the offenders to his office, the FTC, and the FBI.
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