The Sunday Times has exposed a proven system of fake reviews paid on Amazon. The British newspaper published a ebook by Title “Everything Bonsai!”, written in a few days and deliberately full of spelling and grammatical errors. Cost: £65.
The book was published within the gardening section and was then pushed to the top titles across many 5-star fictitious reviews produced with fake accounts. Cost of the operation: 3 pounds for each review. Total cost: £56.
Each fake review it was then marked by Amazon with the "verified purchase" sticker which would highlight the true buyers of the product. But this publication, then, was not actually connected to a purchase operation by those who had written the review.
But who actually wrote the fake reviews? Behind the PCs were four users who, after stealing photos of teenagers from social media (as in the case of 15-year-olds Liz Redmond and Sophie Tiernan) created several fake Amazon accounts with which they published their positive reviews for the ebook, thus making it rise to book authority in the “Gardening & Horticulture” category. Not only that: they also posted negative reviews for publications in open competition with “Everything Bonsai!”.
After the Sunday Times exposed the scam, Amazon removed the ebook from its Kindle Store and closed the accounts of ebook reviewers.
Too late though. The king is naked. It took just over £100 to get around the system.
