A recent New York Times piece highlighted blackmail threads taken on small restaurants that threaten and blackmail the owners. These threats say the person will leave a one-star review, hurting the business’s reputation in Google Maps and Google Search if they do not send money through digital gift cards.

Google responded on Friday by posting a notice in the Google Business Profiles Help forums saying Google is aware of this issue and taking action. Kara from Google wrote:

The NY Times explained, “a new scam targeting restaurants, criminals are leaving negative ratings on restaurants’ Google pages as a bargaining chip to extort digital gift cards.” The text threat was the same in each email: “We sincerely apologize for our actions, and would not want to harm your business but we have no other choice.” The email went on to say that the sender lives in India and that the resale value of the gift card could provide several weeks of income for the sender’s family. The emails, from several Gmail accounts, requested payment to a Proton mail account.

So if you do get these email extortion threats, follow the details above posted by Google.

Forum discussion at Google Business Profiles Help.