Fraudulent Facebook Reviews?
A review of the 53 Facebook reviews
left for TriCity Veterinary Clinic found 43 that appear to be from fake Facebook accounts that were created for the sole purpose of leaving a positive review. Three of the older profile photos, including one of actress Rose McGowan, were found to be taken from another website. The newer profile photos are almost all of the same photo format and are quite suspicious.
Given the issue with Raj’s Yelp reviews, we thought we’d look at his Facebook reviews too. When you Google ‘Tricity Vet’ you get the Facebook reviews in the right side bar. Facebook shows a rating of 4.7 for 60 reviews but only 53 reviews are listed.
In reviewing these 53
ten appeared to be real Facebook accounts with many friends, posts, and/or photos. Of these, seven were positive and three were negative. The reasons the other 43 accounts are suspect are below. A full list of these accounts is at the bottom of this page. You can see all of the actual profiles on Facebook by clicking on the page with the reviews and then right-clicking on any account name.
- All but one of these accounts has no banner photo. Almost everyone on Facebook has a banner photo.
- Five of the 43 have one post. The rest have none. Who gets on Facebook and never posts?
- All but four of the accounts have no friends. While users can limit who can see their friends, Facebook does let you see what pages people are following.
- With few exceptions, these accounts have only one or two photos.
- 37 of these users have profile photos that have the same resolution (1024 x 1024). These appear to be professional headshots. A photo gallery of these can be seen on this page. We’ll leave it to the reader to decide if there is something suspicious about these photos. Possibly AI?
- Three of the older photos, including one of actress Rose McGowan, were found to be taken from another website using a reverse image search. Screen shots of these are below.
- The dates of these reviews come in two batches, one from August 23, 2021 through October 6, 2021, and the next batch from January, 22, 2022 through March 1, 2022. None of the potentially fraudulent reviews are from outside of these two date ranges.
(I also feel it’s appropriate here to flash back to some campaign shenanigans from 2016. A Facebook account for ‘Katie Hadley’ started in 2015 (a few months after Raj Salwan lost his first election) and started friending people involved in Fremont politics. As the 2016 campaign heated up, the account was repeatedly criticizing another City Council candidate Kathy Kimberlin. After I had a falling out with Raj, the account started criticizing me as well. I investigated using a reverse image search and found out that this was a catfish account. The profile photo was that of a teen book author from Kentucky. I created Facebook Post a back then which tells the whole story.)
Christy Wright (Rose McGowan)
Wenell Rutherford (Lisa Napoli)
Allison Crosby (Maggie Berry)
| Name | Review Date | About Date | No. of Post | No. of Friends | No. of Photos | Banner Image | Profile Image Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Margie Wallace | 3/1/2022 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Dorthey Dailey | 2/27/2022 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Alison Wilcox | 2/25/2022 | No | 1 | 0 | 1 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Rose Simmons | 2/23/2022 | No | 1 | 0 | 1 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Laura Bacher | 2/21/2022 | No | 0 | 1 | 2 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Theodore Hoppe | 2/19/2022 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Sweta Morrison | 2/17/2022 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Diana Chaney | 2/14/2022 | No | 0 | 0 | 2 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Tina Mckinney | 2/13/2022 | No | 0 | 0 | 2 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Hannah Munoz | 2/11/2022 | No | 0 | 0 | 2 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Paris Frey | 2/8/2022 | No | 0 | 0 | 4 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Jennifer Richards | 2/6/2022 | No | 0 | 0 | 2 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Carmen Connell | 2/5/2022 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Janis Rowland | 2/3/2022 | No | 0 | 12 | 2 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Arthur Rollins | 2/1/2022 | No | 0 | 0 | 2 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Drake Jenna | 1/29/2022 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Stephanie Ayrito | 1/28/2022 | No | 0 | 0 | 2 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Nicholas Baldwin | 1/26/2022 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Declan Jones | 1/24/2022 | No | 0 | 0 | 2 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Annette Ludwig | 1/22/2022 | No | 0 | 0 | 2 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Chrissy Wright | 10/6/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 600 × 600 |
| Vanessa Clark | 10/5/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 2 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Wenell Rutherford | 10/3/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 600 × 600 |
| Paula Ellis | 10/2/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 2 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Alexa Morrow | 10/1/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 2 | No | 362 x 361 |
| Dayna Houston | 9/30/2021 | No | 1 | 0 | 0 | No | 300 x 300 |
| Carly Mercer | 9/29/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Evelyn Cruz | 9/28/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Vicki Porter | 9/27/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Ethel Wong | 9/26/2021 | No | 1 | 6 | 1 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Ina Butler | 9/25/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 300 × 300 |
| Katherine Smith | 9/24/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Mia Macdonald | 9/23/2021 | No | 1 | 0 | 2 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Jasmine Smith | 9/22/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 2 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Max Thompson | 9/21/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 2 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Alyssa Ward | 9/20/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 2 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Ethel Schwartz | 9/19/2021 | No | 0 | 1 | 1 | No | 300 x 300 |
| Allison Crosby | 9/17/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 2 | No | 600 x 600 |
| Karely Graham | 8/27/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 300 x 300 |
| Mandy Freeman | 8/26/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 3 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Nancy Lynch | 8/25/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| Jasmine Poole | 8/24/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | No | 1024 × 1024 |
| June Gallegos | 8/23/2021 | No | 0 | 0 | 3 | Yes | 1024 × 1024 |