Forty-five Singapore businesses, from restaurants to hair salons, will issue public apologies after admitting they bought fake online reviews from Reputifly, its director Julian Tung Yan Kai, and his BuyReviewSG and GetReviewSG operations, in the competition watchdog’s largest fake-review probe to date.
The Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCS) said the companies had undertaken to stop using fabricated reviews, remove existing bogus reviews and report their progress to the commission. The 45 businesses form part of a wider group of around 100 companies caught up in what CCS described as its largest investigation into fake reviews. Given the scale, CCS is carrying out the probe in two phases: the first covered 47 businesses, of which 45 admitted purchasing fake reviews and provided undertakings, while the remaining two declined. The second phase will cover the rest of the businesses as well as other companies that may have bought fake reviews from the same provider.
According to CCS, the reviews were posted across major platforms including Google, Facebook, Tripadvisor, Carousell, Yelp and Trustpilot. Generative AI was used to make the reviews sound like genuine customer accounts, with varied writing styles, local references and small imperfections — and clients could edit the text before publication. The operation even had a dashboard to generate, manage and track reviews, drawing details from existing positive Google reviews. Some fabricated accounts described an initially doubtful customer being won over, to make the endorsement sound more believable, and a separate calculator helped businesses work out how many five-star reviews they needed to reach their target rating.
The provider recruited people through Telegram and paid them to post prepared fake reviews using their own accounts, according to CCS. Named among the businesses caught up in the case were F&B outlets including Yaowarat Seafood, Burma Social and Torio Japanese Restaurant, as well as Nanyang Brew Coffee — familiar names to diners who rely on star ratings to choose where to eat.
CCS warned that it would pursue both businesses that buy fake reviews and those who profit from supplying them, and called on other providers of fabricated reviews, as well as businesses that have used such services, to voluntarily come forward.
The case highlights growing regulatory scrutiny of deceptive online practices as consumers increasingly rely on ratings and reviews when deciding where to spend. For Singapore’s fiercely competitive F&B scene, where a half-star difference on Google can make or break a restaurant, the temptation to game the system is obvious — but the public apologies now required of the 45 businesses will attach a lasting stigma to the shortcut. The episode is a warning to the wider industry: in the age of AI-generated testimonials, the reviews you read may have been written by no customer at all.