Google has filed a lawsuit against an alleged scammer who is accused of posting more than 350 fraudulent business reviews and 14,000 general reviews, all with the aim of manipulating consumers.

Google says it is filing this consumer protection lawsuit as an opening salvo in its fight against scammers. It hopes that the lawsuit will "put an end to this type of malicious practice." The scammer allegedly not only posted fake reviews, but also used them to steal consumer data and sell it to the highest bidder.

Google detected and removed the misleading content, but filed the lawsuit to stop the malicious actor from ripping off other platforms in an effort to protect its millions of daily users. To that end, the company points out that a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) study suggests that consumers waste an average of $125 per year due to false and misleading product and business reviews.

While this is a major step in the search giant’s never-ending battle against scammers, it has seen some success in recent years. The company says it keeps a close eye on fraudulent content and will protect more than 185,000 businesses from abuse in 2022. Google also says it will have stopped 20 million attempts to create fake business profiles in 2022 thanks to new technologies and processes.