Hit With Fake One-Star Reviews and a Demand for Money? What to Do Today

If your Google profile has just picked up a pile of one-star reviews from people you've never worked for, and someone has messaged offering to remove them for a fee, you're being extorted. Don't pay them. Take screenshots, report it to Google through its extortion form, flag each review, and report the demand to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and your local police.

Below is the order I'd do it in, and a few things that tend to make it worse.

What the scam looks like

It has been reported in the US and the UK, and in September 2026 a run of cases hit small businesses in Australia. SmartCompany wrote about a renovation company near Adelaide that got around two dozen suspicious one-star reviews in a short space of time, which took its rating from close to five stars down to about 4.3. You can read their article here.

From the cases that have been written up, it usually goes like this:

1. Several one-star or two-star reviews arrive within a day or two, often with no text or a vague line.
2. The accounts that posted them are new, have no other activity, or have a phone number or link in the profile.
3. A message turns up on WhatsApp, Telegram or email saying the reviews were paid for and will be taken down once you send money, often in crypto or gift cards.

Google has a help page for exactly this. It describes a sudden increase in one-star and two-star reviews, followed by someone asking for money, goods or services to remove them. Google's guidance is here.

Why small trades and firms get hit hardest

Your star rating is an average, so how much damage twenty fake reviews do depends on how many real ones you already have. Here's the maths on two profiles:

A painter or a two-lawyer practice with thirty reviews drops from near the top to a rating people skip over. That's why the scammers go after smaller businesses, and why paying them off can feel tempting. It won't fix anything.

Collect the evidence first

Google says the sooner you gather evidence the better, and reviews can be edited or deleted once whoever is behind them notices you're reporting them. Before you reply to anyone, save:

• screenshots of every message asking for money, with the date, time and the sender's number, username or email showing
• a link to each of the suspicious reviews (open the review on your profile and copy the link)
• screenshots of the reviewers' profiles, especially any phone numbers or links on them
• a few lines noting when the reviews started, when the message came in, and whether anything like this has happened before

Keep it all in one folder. You'll be attaching the same files to three different reports.

Don't pay, and don't reply to them

Google tells business owners not to pay or engage, because it encourages more attempts and doesn't guarantee anything gets removed. If you pay, the person might delete the reviews from the accounts they control, but there's nothing stopping them coming back next month, and now they know you'll pay.

I wouldn't send them a message threatening the police either. Screenshot the conversation and then block the number.

Report it to Google

There are two separate things to do here.

First, fill in the merchant extortion form, which is linked from Google's extortion help page. It asks for your contact details, the business name, address and profile link, details of the reviews, and how you were contacted and what they asked for. Attach your screenshots. Google says it will look into it and tell you the result, but it won't share the details of the investigation.

Second, flag each review on its own. You can do this from the report icon next to the review on your profile, or through the Reviews Management Tool, which also lets you check where each report has got to. A report starts as "Decision pending" and ends either with the review being removed or with "Report reviewed - no policy violation." Google explains the tool here.

Google says it usually takes several days to assess a review. If it decides a review can stay, you can appeal once, covering up to ten reviews, and you'll get the answer by email. Since you only get one go, wait until the first decisions come back and then appeal whatever is left in one batch, with your extortion evidence attached.

Report the demand outside Google as well

Asking for money in return for stopping damage to your business is extortion, so report it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, online or by phone, even if you didn't lose any money. The CAFC reporting page is here. Report it to your local police too, through their non-emergency line or online form.

Realistically nobody is going to be arrested over an overseas WhatsApp number. It's still worth doing, because a police report number is something you can add to your Google appeal, and the reports help the authorities link cases together.

Replying to the reviews in public

Customers will see the reviews before Google deals with them, so a short reply under each one is reasonable once you've reported it. Something like:

We can't find any record of working with you, and we've reported this review to Google. If we've got that wrong, please call us so we can sort it out.

Use the same short reply each time. Don't mention the extortion and don't accuse anybody.

Law firms, accountants and clinics should be more careful. Your duty of confidentiality still applies when the review is fake, and saying "this person was never our client" tells people something about who your clients are. A general reply saying you can't discuss any matter publicly is safer. The Law Society's Rules of Professional Conduct cover what you post online the same as anything else.

What not to do while you wait

Don't buy reviews to push the rating back up. Fake reviews are against Google's policies whichever way they point, and a sudden rush of five-star reviews from brand new accounts looks like the same kind of manipulation you've just reported. You could lose the profile altogether, and our suspended profile guide shows what a slog it is to get it back.

Don't offer customers a discount, a draw entry or anything else for a review either. That's against Google's rules even when the customer is real.

It's also better not to message your whole customer list in one go asking for reviews. Keep asking at the usual time, when a job's finished and the customer is happy, and the average will recover as real reviews come in. There's more on that in our guide to getting Google reviews.

Be wary of any "review removal" company that guarantees results. Only Google can remove a review, and some of these offers come from the same people who posted them.

Check who can get into your profile

While you're in there, it's a good time to tidy up access. Go to the owners and managers list in your profile settings and remove former staff, old agencies and anyone you don't recognise. Turn on two-step verification for the Google account that owns the profile. And if someone phones claiming to be from Google and asking for payment to keep your listing live, hang up. Google doesn't make those calls.

If you'd like a hand

You can do most of this yourself in an afternoon. If the reviews are still up after Google's first decisions, or you're not sure what you're looking at, we're happy to go through the profile and the evidence with you. Get in touch and mention review extortion.