By Forum Staff
State Attorney General Tish James and the Federal Trade Commission on Monday secured $1.6 million from Roomster, an online apartment search platform, and its owners, John Shriber and Roman Zaks, for defrauding millions of renters nationwide by posting unverified apartment listings and fake reviews.
Monday’s consent order also prohibits Roomster and its executives from buying and posting fake reviews about their listings to lure customers.
Roomster, a Manhattan-based company, failed to verify apartments submitted to its website, posted non-existent apartment listings, and scammed consumers with fake positive reviews that it bought and posted online. James and the FTC co-led a coalition of six attorneys general to stop Roomster’s practices and secure restitution for impacted individuals nationwide.
In August 2022, James and the FTC filed a lawsuit against Roomster for misleading consumers by posting fake reviews that were purchased through marketers, posting non-existent apartment listings, and failing to verify apartments listed on their website. An investigation found that Roomster did not actually verify listings posted on its platform by users or ensure that they were real or authentic. Undercover investigators were easily able to post a listing with a U.S. Postal Office commercial facility address on the platform. The listing provided by the undercover investigators had fake rental specifications and remained on the platform for several months. At no point did Roomster contact the undercover investigators to verify the address, the specifics of the apartment, the legitimacy of the email, or other personal information of the lister.
To lend credibility to its unverified listings, Roomster’s executives saturated the internet with tens of thousands of fake 4- and 5-star reviews. Roomster’s CEO Shriber and Chief Technology Officer Zaks, bought more than 20,000 fake reviews from Jonathan Martinez, who did business as AppWinn, to increase traffic to their platform. Martinez used more than 2,500 fake iTunes accounts, as well as fake Gmail accounts, to push out fake reviews on Roomster’s apps. Before Martinez became aware of this investigation, his website stated, “Buy app reviews & boost your app ranking.”
Some examples of the fake 5-star reviews that Roomster bought from Martinez and published include:
Wonderful!
“Roomster is better then [sic] others. Very easy to use. Tons of listing. No scammers, all users are real. Easy to communicate with owners. In a single word FANTASTIC!
like!”
The sheer volume of positive fake reviews diluted 1-star reviews from real users, such as:
“Full of scammers”
“I highly highly suggest that you do not use this site! Because you will get scammed. This app is loaded with people trying to scam you! Out of every 10 post 8 [sic] are scammers DO NOT USE THIS APP!!”
“This app is garbage. I had higher hopes but it completely let me down. Every profile on here seems to be a fake profile and every message I got from people said almost exactly the same thing. Not worth it”.
Monday’s consent order includes a monetary judgment of $36.2 million and civil penalties totaling $10.9 million payable to the states.
