I was paid to write fake Google reviews – then my ‘bosses’ tried to scam me

The holiday flat near(ish) the Roman ruins of Pompeii was “disgusting”, and smelled of “a mix of dampness and sewage”, according to one reviewer on Google Maps. I never visited, but I gave it five stars.

I did the same for a DoubleTree by Hilton hotel across the River Thames, an Ibis budget hotel in east London that is part of the Accor group, a central Travelodge and the nearby Hyatt Place – some of the best-known hotel brands in the world. Scattered in there were requests for reviews for hostels and B&Bs in Genova, Naples, Maastricht, Krakow and Brussels. For a few days I had a new job: writing fake reviews on Google Maps in exchange for cryptocurrency.

All of the hotel brands who responded to a request for comment said they had nothing to do with the reviews – and indeed said they had never seen anything like it. So what is going on? The answer appears to give a small insight into the huge and growing industry of online scams that is undermining trust in the customer…