The FTC Just Sued a Chicago Guy Who Built 7,600 Fake Local Businesses

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

Fake businesses on Google are stealing calls from legitimate local companies

Image source: FTC Press Release (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/05/ftc-illinois-take-action-stop-deceptive-conduct-company-created-thousands-business-listings-fake) 

Let’s say you’re in Illinois. You search Google for “HVAC contractor near Buffalo Grove.” A company called “Levine Heating and Cooling” shows up in Google Maps; 4.7 stars, 14 reviews, local address, local phone number. Not bad. Looks legit to you. It’s near your place, so you call.

Image source: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/premium_home_service_-_filed_complaint.pdf

The phone rings in a call center in the Philippines.

The “local business” at 1400 Busch Parkway, Buffalo Grove? It’s fake. And so are the reviews. Fabricated. 

I found these older reviews on Yelp, which pulled them from Google. I read them. Many felt off — too perfect, way too professional. People don’t talk like that. Most people don’t use their full names to review either. The whole thing is too good to be true. Turns out, it was.

The FTC and the Illinois Attorney General filed suit on May 11, 2026, against a Chicago-area operator named Yosef Bernath and his company B.E.S.T. GDR, LLC — also doing business as Premium Home Service. The case is United States of America v. B.E.S.T. GDR, LLC, filed in the Northern District of Illinois.

The complaint runs 35 pages. Bear with me as I lay this out.

According to the complaint, Bernath and his operation:

• Created thousands of fake local business profiles across the country, each with a made-up company name, a fake local address, and a phone number routed to overseas call center agents
• Used SEO techniques to push those fake listings toward the top of Google search results
• Fabricated fake reviewers — complete with stolen profile photos of real people — to post 5-star ratings that buried legitimate complaints
• Hired SEO providers specifically to write, create, remove, or change reviews on Google
• Collected credit card and debit card information from consumers under the pretense of being a real local company
• Deceived over 100,000 consumers since at least 2018 and took tens of millions of dollars in the process

The complaint lists several examples of the addresses used for fake business profiles. 

From the filed complaint:

“The address Defendants list for ‘Mason Heating & Air Conditioning,’ 106 E. Church Street, Woodstock, Illinois 60098, is actually the location of the Woodstock Fountain in the Woodstock town square.”

“The address Defendants list for ‘Horton Electrical Service,’ 7015 New Territory Boulevard, Sugar Land, Texas 77479, is a donut shop.”

“The address Defendants list for ‘Merrick Garbage Collection,’ 16 N. Main Street, Pennington, New Jersey 08534, is a yarn and needlepoint boutique.”

A Texas consumer who got stiffed on an appointment actually drove to the listed address for “Horton Electrical Service” to complain in person. He found a donut shop. He then exchanged over 20 emails with overseas customer service reps before finally getting his money back.

Building industrial-scale fake reviews 

Here’s what the FTC documented.

Stolen profile photos

The complaint describes how defendants “misappropriated the online images of a professor at a North Carolina university and a former executive at a McLean, Virginia-based professional services company” to create fake customer accounts — “Rory Kendall” and “Betty Curtis” — who left 5-star reviews for a fake Illinois electrical company. Neither person has any record in the defendants’ customer database.

The citizen watchdog site premiumhomeservice.info documented this practice going even further. According to their research, the operation stole the name and photograph of a man directly from his obituary to create a fake reviewer. 

One reviewer, 29 reviews, same month

A fake customer named “Lance Smith” posted 29 five-star reviews for 29 different electrical contractors in different cities across the country — all in or around January 2024. Every single company was invented by the defendants. The reviews read identically. The phrase “highly skilled” appears across multiple reviews. The complaint even notes that one of the company responses thanked “James” for the review — not “Lance Smith,” the supposed author.

Foreign email accounts posing as American customers

Dozens of the accounts posting positive reviews used email addresses tied to foreign university domains — ten accounts with “@npu.ac.th” (a Thai university), ten more with “@stu.kemu.ac.ke” (a Kenyan university). One Pennsylvania-based fake company had 42 reviews in a single month, and more than a third of them came from accounts with email domains tied to Peru, Thailand, and Kenya.

The response speed tells the story, too

Defendants, or those acting on their behalf, didn’t just write the fake reviews — they responded to them. All around the same time. In bulk.

And then there’s this admission from the complaint:

“Defendants admit that they use third parties, including search engine optimization providers, to write, provide, create, remove, delete, or change consumer reviews for posting on Google. Defendants further admit to knowing that ‘there were reviews created by some third parties which were not legitimately produced by customers.'”

They knew. They paid for it anyway. And they kept doing it even after receiving a Civil Investigative Demand from the FTC in February 2024.

Why this matters for every legitimate local business

Here’s the practical damage this does to you.

When a fake business outranks you, even by one or two positions, and the  consumer has no way to tell the difference at a glance, you lose. You built your reputation one real job at a time. The fraud operation spun theirs up in a week. These fake profiles also diverted leads from legitimate local companies. 

One consumer quoted in the complaint put it plainly: she noticed the negative reviews reporting no-shows were buried. After her own bad experience, she tried to leave a review so it would appear at the top as a warning.

“I saw one other negative review about [the company] scheduling an appointment and not showing up. [The company] also had a couple other locations in nearby cities, where the reviews reporting no-shows were pushed to the bottom by many other five-star reviews. I wanted to leave a Google review so that my negative experience would be displayed at the top for others to see. But when I posted mine, a handful of new five-star reviews appeared at the top.”

That’s the suppression mechanism at work in real time.

This is why SEO gets a bad name

The word “SEO” shows up in this complaint as a tool of fraud. The defendants explicitly hired “SEO providers” to manufacture and manage fake reviews. That is why some business owners look at the phrase “SEO company” with suspicion. Fraudsters like this use the terminology and the tactics of legitimate search optimization as cover for deception.

It’s the same reason a small number of bad actors in any field make life harder for everyone doing it honestly. Fake review farms aren’t SEO. They’re fraud dressed up in SEO vocabulary. The FTC is treating it as such, and so should you.

I do wonder if there will be any consequences for the SEO providers who wrote and managed fake reviews for this operation. My guess? Probably not. They’re likely overseas and out of reach.

Here’s what the FTC is charging them with

Count I — Deceptive claim to be a local business (FTC Act, Section 5)

The defendants represented that they were local home repair companies operating from specific physical addresses. They were not. That’s a deceptive act under federal law.

Count II — Deceptive claims about service delivery (FTC Act, Section 5)

(That’s 2 above, not eleven. Some of you may get this joke.) They told consumers a technician would be dispatched from the local business they called, on a specific date and time. In many instances, no one came, and the company had no idea whether anyone was available.

Count III — Fake reviews as deceptive acts (FTC Act, Section 5)

They represented that the reviews on their profiles were written by real customers. They were not. Many were fabricated by the defendants, their employees, their family members, or purchased from third parties.

Count IV — Reviews and Testimonials rule violations

The FTC’s Reviews and Testimonials Rule took effect in October 2024. This count specifically charges the defendants with writing, purchasing, and procuring fake reviews — including reviews written by employees and the defendant’s own family members. This carries civil penalties for each violation.

Count V — Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act violations (financial data fraud)

This is the one people might not expect. By using false pretenses — fake company names, fake addresses, fake reviews — to collect consumers’ credit card and debit card numbers, the defendants violated the GLB Act, which prohibits obtaining financial institution customer data through fraudulent statements. This also carries civil penalties.

Count VI — Illinois Consumer Fraud Act

The state of Illinois, through Attorney General Kwame Raoul, is pursuing parallel claims under state law, covering the same core deceptions: fake local identity, fake service promises, and fake reviews. The complaint notes potential penalties of $50,000 per deceptive act, plus an additional $50,000 per violation committed with intent to defraud.

Count VII — Operating under unregistered business names in Illinois

Separately, the defendants ran businesses in Illinois under names like “Brewer Plumbing and Rodding,” “Horton Electric Service,” “Diaz Electrical Consulting,” and others — none of which were properly registered assumed business names under Illinois law. That’s a standalone violation, and repeated offenses can reach Class 4 felony territory under state law.

Count VIII — Illinois Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act

Covering the same deceptions under a different state statute, with specific focus on geographic misrepresentation and advertising services the defendants did not intend to deliver as advertised.

Eight counts. Federal and state. Civil penalties, monetary judgment, permanent injunction, and restitution all on the table.

The SEO tactics the defendants used to rank fake profiles

The complaint is explicit that the defendants used search optimization to make their fake listings competitive. Based on the conduct described, here’s what the operation appears to have done to push thousands of invented companies toward the top of Google’s local results:

• Keyword-rich business names. The fake companies used terms like “electrical services,” “plumbing,” “heating and cooling,” and city or neighborhood names directly in the business name — e.g., “Levine Heating and Cooling,” “Ramseys Electric Company.” That’s basic keyword targeting in the business name field.
• Local phone numbers and local addresses. Matching area codes and pinned map locations create geographic relevance signals. Google uses proximity and address data in local rankings.
• Volume of fake positive reviews and star ratings. Number of reviews, review velocity, and star ratings influence Google Maps ranking. The more 5-star reviews, the higher the signal, real or fabricated.
• Suppression of negative reviews. When real customers left 1-star reviews, scam SEO added batches of fake 5-star reviews to push them down, maintaining the inflated rating.
• Third-party SEO providers hired specifically for review management. The defendants admitted this. Outsourced review creation is part of a broader content and reputation management service category. These providers exist, and some are willing to work this way.

None of this is novel. It’s a well-known manipulation playbook applied at industrial scale. Thousands of profiles, over 7,600 phone numbers, more than 250 area codes are what made it federally prosecutable.

This is just ONE operation that got caught. There are more.

You now know something most business owners don’t: the local search results you compete in have been systematically manipulated by at least one operation that built a fake empire of thousands of ghost businesses, fake people, and purchased 5-star ratings, and ran it for the better part of a decade before the FTC showed up.

The defendants in this case took tens of millions of dollars from consumers who thought they were supporting local businesses. The legal system is catching up. The question is whether your real business is positioned to win in an environment where that kind of competition exists.

That starts with your Google Business Profile, your review strategy, and working with our local marketing company, MyLocalStart.