The Google review extortion scam targeting Canadian trade shops

A scam hitting Canadian trade shops in 2026 works like this. Twenty fake one-star Google reviews appear on your business profile in a single day. A few hours later, you get a WhatsApp message from someone offering to make the reviews disappear. For a fee.

Do not pay. Do not respond. Here is what to actually do, in order.

The case that put this on my radar

In late 2024, HVAC owner Jonathan Towner of Silicon Valley Comfort in San Jose received 20 one-star Google reviews in a single day. The reviews were vague. They mentioned services his business does not offer. They came from accounts with no other activity. Within hours, scammers contacted him through social media claiming someone had ordered the bad reviews and offering to take them down. For money.

Fake Review Watch, an industry watchdog, investigated and found the same reviewers had hit more than 150 businesses around the world that same day. An HVAC company in New York. A moving company in Chicago. A dental practice in Switzerland. The scam is industrial, automated, and global.

In 2024, Google removed 188 million reviews from its platform flagged as fake or misleading. The volume has grown in 2025 and 2026, not shrunk.

Why Canadian trade shops are the next target

I have talked to a handful of Canadian trade owners over the past few months who have either been hit or know someone in their Facebook trade group who has. The scam is already here.

Three things make HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and roofing shops especially vulnerable:

• Reviews drive your lead flow. A drop from 4.8 stars to 3.9 stars can cut weekly inbound calls in half. The scammers know this.
• You do not have a marketing team. A solo owner or a 3-person shop has nobody monitoring the Google Business Profile in real time.
• The emotional reaction is the point. Anger, panic, and the urge to make it stop are exactly what makes the payment demand work.

This is also the same vulnerability that lets bad customers use their reviews against you, which I have written about in 5 ways customers try to underpay you.

Step by step: what to do if it happens to you

Step 1. Do not engage. Do not reply to the reviews. Do not respond to the WhatsApp or DM from the scammer. Both responses confirm you are reading what they are sending. That is exactly what they want.

Step 2. Document everything. Screenshot every fake review, every message from the scammer, the timestamps, the reviewer profile pages. Save it all in a folder on your phone or laptop. You will need this in step 3.

Step 3. Report the reviews to Google. Open each fake review in your Google Business Profile dashboard and click the three dots, then "Report review." Use "Spam" or "Off-topic" as the category. Repeat for each one. Then file a separate report through Google's support flow describing the extortion pattern. Attach the screenshots.

Step 4. Treat it as fraud. If the extortion continues, file a report with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at 1-888-495-8501. They cannot remove the reviews, but the case file builds the pattern Google needs to act faster.

Step 5. Get fresh real reviews. The fastest way to dilute the damage is volume of legitimate recent reviews. Text or email your last 30 happy customers with a direct link to your Google Business Profile and ask for a review. Most will do it within a week.

Why paying does not work

Every owner I have talked to who paid says the same thing. The reviews did not come down. The scammers came back asking for more. Other businesses paid and saw a second wave of fake reviews within a month.

Google's response time is slow. Anywhere from a few days to two weeks. But legitimate fake-review reports with documentation do get the reviews removed. Patience beats payment every time.

The hard truth

This is the cost of running a business that depends on Google. The platform built the system, the scammers found the gap, and the businesses caught in the middle have to play defence. The owners who survive this and the owners who get crushed by it usually look identical from the outside. The difference is how quickly they document, report, and refresh their real reviews.

Pay your time, not the scammer.

Sources: ACHR News investigation, April 2026. Fake Review Watch / Kay Dean. Footbridge Media report on Canadian contractor cases. Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.