FAKE REVIEWER FINED, JAILED

Aman who wrote and sold hundreds of positive reviews about Italian restaurants and hotels for posting on Tripadvisor has been jailed for nine months and ordered to pay an à8,000 (about R140,000) fine. This is according to the travelreview website itself, which recently posted about the case on its blog. The website said the court had convicted the owner of Italian tourism promoter Promo Salento of selling fake reviews to hundreds of companies.

The judge ruled that writing fake reviews under a false identity was a crime under Italian law.

The man, who was not named, ran the company in the town of Lecce, southern Italy. It advertised packages of fake reviews to local businesses.

TripAdvisor said it had first spotted the business in 2015, and had blocked more than 1 000 attempts to submit reviews to the site. Businesses that had paid for the fake reviews were also penalised by having their popularity ranking lowered, the company said.