Hundreds of fake 5-star reviews to Italian police stations spotted on Google Maps

I enjoy contributing to Google Maps with reviews and photos about the places I visit. As a traveler, I find the tool and its users recommendations very useful and reliable. Besides, the community behind (Local Guides Connect) is a vibrant place where to meet locals and travellers, eager to share experiences and local knowledge and organise meet-ups around the world.

The moderators help keeping the place tidy, fighting spammers and fake reviewers, whose contributions are usually less relevant than what’s left by experienced users (there’s a grading system in place). To improve authenticity, Google applies a Bayesian average to add quality to its numbers.

I recently found a weird Local Guide - Level 5, quite high - with the following aspects that make him resemble a fake user or probably just a bot:

1. his name (Hans K Günther) corresponds to a German race researcher and eugenicist, favoured by the Third Reich and the profile image a lion, symbol of Venice (and its ancient Serenissima Republic), not much genuine for a reviewer;
2. he’s been posting only 5-star reviews to Italian police stations (almost all Carabinieri, but also a few other corps recently), with no comments or just the name of the station;
3. he’s been posting cropped screenshot from Google Street View as photos, definitely not taken by “him”;
4. his reviews have been “written” all in one place, in fact it seems that he’s been covering one region per day, mostly in two weeks.

The activity of this “user” has been altering the quality and the authenticity of places rating.

Here is the account. I have submitted the case to Google Local Guides moderators, not sure if/when it will be banned.

What could be the reason of this activity? Probably a way to raise the profile of Italian police? Or the need to visualise the distribution network of police places in Italy? The fact remains quite weird…