Google filed a lawsuit against a Maryland man in federal court Wednesday, accusing him and others of making fake listings and fake reviews on the tech giant’s services.
Yaniv Asayag, who operates a home improvement company in Beltsville, is accused along with 20 other defendants of making fake listings for sham businesses, plus faux reviews from bogus people the past two years.
According to Google, Mr. Asayag and other defendants started off by creating a fake listing or taking control of an existing listing, which they modified to have a generic name referencing a service, like a locksmith.
From early in 2023 until last May, Mr. Asayag altered listings for 149 businesses at least 1,034 times. Most of the businesses were in the District of Columbia area, although some were in other parts of the U.S. as well as in Turkey, Google claims.
Many of the profiles had addresses listed for them that were in fact buildings used for entirely different purposes. A listing for Pristige Garage Doors used the address of a National Guard armory, while another for a locksmith used the address of a Best Buy, according to Google’s civil complaint.
More than 10,000 fake listings were associated with the scheme, according to CBS News.
Customers “end up being sent to a different business altogether — one they did not choose and by whom they did not consent to be contacted — and, troublingly, a business that may ultimately demand a much larger sum when they arrive onsite, claiming the work was more complicated than expected,” Google wrote in its complaint.
Since the scheme falsifies listings and reviews on Google contrary to its terms and conditions requiring businesses to be real and reviews to be based on real experiences with a business, the company contends that Mr. Asayag and the other defendants broke their contracts with Google and induced others to break their contracts as well.
Google didn’t specify an amount for damages in its complaint.
“Consumers use the reviews under those listings to actually make decisions based on what service to use or not to use. A fake profile and a fake review undermine the trust that you have in that ecosystem,” Google general counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado told CBS News.
