A company that has requested the posting of 'Fake Review' is ordered a fine by suing a lawsuit

by Soumil Kumar

The act of selling the product in return for goods and money, writing the fake high evaluation review by the mail order site or SNS is called "fake review". The fake review may lower the reliability of the review system on mail-order sites such as Amazon and will have a negative impact on platforms and consumers. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the United States announced that it initially filed a lawsuit against companies that requested such a fake review to raise the product and deal with them strictly.

FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Independent Retail Website | Federal Trade Commission
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/02/ftc-brings-first-case-challenging-fake-paid-reviews-independent

Cure Encapsulations' misleading claims and fake reviews | Consumer Information
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2019/02/cure-encapsulations-misleading-claims-and-fake-reviews

Fake reviews are rapidly increasing with the development of the Internet, which is a big problem for consumers who decide to purchase products with reference to reviews such as sales sites. Fake reviews have already been developed as a kind of business, and many companies have earned highly rated reviews in return for money.

The FTC is an organization that oversees and monitors fair transactions in the United States, and deals with unfair and fraudulent acts related to commercial activities. The FTC which regards such a fake review as problematic announced that it made the first "lawsuit against a company that requested a fake review" on February 26, 2019. The case was sued by a supplement sales company called Cure Encapsulations and Naftula Jacobowitz who owns Cure Encapsulations. Cure Encapsulations sells weight loss supplements on Amazon and the FTC has paid money to third party websites and has written false and unfounded fake reviews about supplements.

According to FTC's (PDF) complaint , Cure Encapsulations sells "supplements effective for appetite suppression / fat suppression / weight loss" at Amazon. So Jacobowitz said that he asked for companies to specialize in posting a fake review called "amazonverifiedreviews.com" for the purpose of advertising their products.

by rawpixel.com

Mr. Jacobowitz told the amazonverifiedreviews.com operator, "The product requires an average of 4.3 or more of Amazon customer review 5 grades," the FTC insists. Actually a fake review by amazonverifiedreviews.com is posted on Amazon, consumers may have purchased supplements with reference to a fake review.

The FTC also said that the supplements strongly suppressed appetite, "fat suppressed", "weighed more than 2 pounds (about 900 g) in a week", "20 pounds (about 9 kg We succeeded in losing weight as much as possible "and said that there is no ground and it is false.

Defeated the federal district court in New York east in response to the complaint (PDF) draft order , as long as there is no scientific evidence that you can trust, such as human clinical trials, the description such as "appetite suppressant" "weight loss" is Cure Encapsulations do To prohibit things. Next, in the instruction draft, Cure Encapsulations notifies users who purchased supplements e-mails of doubts about the effectiveness claimed by the FTC and also notifies Amazon of the fact that Cure Encapsulations purchased a fake review I command you to do. Furthermore, in the draft order, Cure Encapsulations ordered FTC to pay a fine of 50,000 dollars (about 5.5 million yen) and pay unpaid taxes.

Andrew Smith, FTC's Consumer Protection Director, said, "People trust reviews that they refer to when shopping online, as malicious enterprises purchase fake reviews and improperly review reviews such as Amazon reviews, We will damage not only consumers but also general corporations that keep rules. "

by bruce mars