Amazon sues alleged fake-review brokers with ties to thousands of sellers

Amazon is suing two individuals and several businesses it alleged were brokered an enormous network of fake reviewers across its marketplace.<br><br>The company announced Monday that it had filed a federal lawsuit against one Florida resident and another New York-based resident.<br><br>The Florida resident, who wasn't named in the company's announcement, allegedly runs one of the fake-review brokers that Amazon said had directly linked 350,000 unique Amazon product reviews to just 1,200 reviewers.<br><br>The New York resident, however, was named as the owner of two businesses that Amazon had linked to more than 300,000 allegedly fake reviews.<br><br>Amazon said both brokers were able to create and spread the fake reviews by offering monetary compensation, free products and other rewards to reviewers who would post positive reviews for the products.<br><br>The company also said it was able to trace thousands of the fake reviews to a single person, who it alleged had posted over 51,000 reviews to Amazon since 2016.<br><br>The company was not able to say how many of the reviews had been created since 2020, when it started to crack down on fake reviews.<br><br>Amazon said the lawyers for the two brokers had declined to comment.<br><br>The company said it had been able to remove the reviews from the platform.<br><br>Amazon has faced criticism in recent years over the spread of fake accounts on its platform.<br><br>Last week, Amazon reported it had removed over 100 million fake product reviews in 2022.<br><br>The company also said that over 100,000 of those fake reviews were coming from suspicious accounts.<br><br>&#x200B;