Amazon Steps Up Pursuit of Merchants Who Pay for Fake Reviews

Amazon.com, which has sued more than 1,000 parties for allegedly offering fake reviews for sale to post on the retailer’s website, is now going after merchants who it says paid for false testimony. In three cases filed with the American Arbitration Association, Amazon accused third-party sellers operating on its site of creating or paying for fake reviews of their products. A significant percentage of the reviews for these merchants’ products, Amazon says in the filing, were from so-called “sock puppets,” accounts of made-up people created to post gushing comments.