Yelp sues North Shore user of site for posting fake reviews

A popular customer review site is taking one North Vancouver user to court for making money on false claims.

Yelp, a website where consumers can find opinions on everything from restaurants to clothing stores, is suing a North Shore man for allegedly posting fake reviews and making a profit from them.

The company filed the lawsuit Sept. 19 in B. C. Supreme Court.

“Yelp has a large, engaged user community and we learned about this individual’s actions from that community as well as from business owners who he had contacted and who, in turn, reported him to us,” said Aaron Schur, Yelp’s senior litigation lawyer. “We worked with our users to gain more information about who was behind this and ensured that our technical barriers to this kind of conduct were working effectively.”

The reviewer, who is identified only as John Doe in court documents, used various email addresses and aliases, including James McNulty, jon tom and bill mads. Court documents reveal that he “resides or has a dwelling in North Vancouver.”

According to the lawsuit, the man allegedly made deals with an unspecified number of businesses to post fake positive reviews in exchange for money, had contacted members of the public to post fake reviews which he would pay them for and threatened to create more reviews unless Yelp paid him money. The lawsuit alleges the North Shore reviewer has posted fake reviews since 2012.

Yelp was founded in San Francisco in 2004 and has reviewers around the globe. Yelp makes money through the advertisements it sells to businesses.