Several high-end San Francisco restaurants said they have been hit by a stream of cookie cutter negative reviews.
It's a Google review scam that looks a lot like extortion.
In addition to the negative reviews, scammers send an email to the owners, demanding money to stop posting the one-star reviews.
It happened to 3rd Cousin restaurant in Bernal Heights over the Fourth of July weekend.
The incident also happened to Nightbird restaurant, located on Gough Street.
"I'd say that it's been a really hard couple of years," said Kim Alter, chef and owner of Nightbird. "In all honestly, it's probably a really small thing to get these one-star reviews. But I think it was just kind of the tipping point. I was like 'this is ridiculous.' We're kind of fighting for reservations with so many other restaurants, so to have that one person put up ten one-star reviews. Someone might not look past those and someone might not come in."
A similar scam was going around in 2018. Now it's back in San Francisco, Chicago, and several other U.S. cities.
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Google is encouraging users and business owners to flag suspicious activity to them.
In a statement, they wrote in part: “Our team is actively investigating this situation and have already begun removing cases of policy-violating content. Our policies clearly state reviews must be based on real experiences."
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