JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Since opening his HVAC company in Jacksonville\u2019s Pine Forest neighborhood less than two years ago, Aldi Gjeka has received 277 reviews on Google, 262 of which are five stars. The other 15 are one-star reviews, all of which were written within the same hour earlier this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI get a notification that I got a one-star review, so it kind of threw me off,\u201d said Gjeka, owner of \u2018Florida Air Flow,\u2019 \u201cI was kind of freaking out because I was like, \u2018where are these coming from?\u2019 None of those people are my customers.\u201d<\/p>\n
After seeing the reviews, Gjeka sent Action News Jax a text message thread between him and a random iCloud email address that had initially texted him, claiming to be a \u2018review provider\u2019 who was apparently responsible for all of the new one-star reviews on Gjeka\u2019s Google review page.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n The person who sent the text claimed to have been paid by one of Gjeka\u2019s competitors to write 40 negative reviews about his business. They told Gjeka they \u2018felt bad\u2019 about it, but if he \u2018made a deal\u2019 they would remove all of the bad reviews and reveal who hired them, for a price.<\/p>\n \u201cOriginally, he wanted $150. He wanted me to send it through CashApp,\u201d Gjeka said, \u201cafter I told him that I wasn\u2019t going to send the money, next thing you know, within about a 15-minute period, I had 15 one-star reviews.\u201d<\/p>\n After Gjeka shared his experience online, despite still having the one-star reviews on his Google page, he got in touch with George Silva, owner of \u2018Fresh Look Painting\u2019 in Apopka, who not only said he was also targeted by a negative review scam, but it was apparently by the same person.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople were asking for money to remove the reviews. That got me stressed out for a minute,\u201d Silva told Action News Jax.<\/p>\n We compared the one-star reviews between Gjeka and Silva\u2019s businesses. They were made only a day apart and some were written by the same Google accounts.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re trying to maintain the integrity of our business,\u201d Silva said, \u201cthis is very damaging.\u201d<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: <\/b>Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n We reached out to the Jacksonville FBI office about this, asking if it had been made aware of Gjeka\u2019s case or any similar local cases. The FBI office told us it could not confirm or deny the existence of such an investigation.<\/p>\n But the FBI\u2019s annual internet crimes report from 2024<\/a>, the most recent year available, says more people have been reporting more financial losses to cyber crimes around the U.S. year-over-year, at least since 2020. <\/p>\n The trend of negative review scams has become prevalent enough to where Google has launched a separate page for business owners to file a report, if they feel like they\u2019ve been a victim. You can find a link to the site here,<\/a> where Google stresses not to give any money to someone claiming to be a negative review provider, or anyone promising to delete negative reviews.<\/p>\n Gjeka said he\u2019s not quite sure what his next best step is at the moment, aside from telling other businesses to watch out.<\/p>\n \u201cI might be a target right now and I might be a victim of this, but at the end of the day, somebody else will be, too,\u201d Gjeka said.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: <\/b>Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/b><\/a>] <\/b><\/p>\n Click here<\/b><\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/b><\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Since opening his HVAC company in Jacksonville\u2019s Pine Forest neighborhood less than two years ago,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":553046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,3188,723,7310,425,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-553045","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fl","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-jacksonville","12":"tag-local","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115981977239443960","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}