Trustpilot’s Reputation Casino: Are Brokers and Props Playing or Getting Played?

Trustpilot abruptly wiped out over 1,300 reviews from the profile of prop firm Hola Prime, leaving just 49 behind, Finance Magnates reported exclusively last week. The reason? The firm had allegedly flooded the platform with fake reviews to boost its rating. While Hola Prime is just the latest to be exposed, the case highlights a much bigger issue: the booming black market for fake reviews in the trading industry.

Read the exclusive story on Trustpilot’s action against Hola Prime: Prop Firm Hola Prime Had 1,300+ Trustpilot Reviews Yesterday, but Only 49 Today. What Happened?

The Rush to “Excellence”

One key reason for Trustpilot's trustworthiness and popularity in the trading industry—where trust is everything—is the ability of dissatisfied traders to leave feedback. If a broker delays withdrawals or a prop trading firm halts operations, the trader can leave negative feedback about them. Based on all positive and negative reviews, Trustpilot calculates the TrustScore. A five-star rating indicates the highest satisfaction level, whereas a one-star rating shows the lowest.

The trading industry was quick to leverage Trustpilot to its advantage. Brokerage giant eToro and prop trading firm The5ers are just two popular brands that showcase their Trustpilot scores in the most prestigious spot—their homepage—to assert trust among traders.

However, Trustpilot's popularity has become a double-edged sword, opening up massive opportunities for fake reviews. The review platform is not indifferent to this and emphasizes that it is very strict about the genuineness of submitted reviews.

According to Trustpilot, every single review first goes through “specialist detection technology,” which uses a combination of machine learning, AI, and data analysis to examine patterns associated with how it ends up on the platform and its relationship with other reviews and reviewers. It uses “hundreds of data points” for this analysis, which include IP addresses, user identifiers, device characteristics, location data, and timestamps.

The Opportunity with Fake Reviews

Fake reviewers are swarming social media platforms, offering Trustpilot reviews and verified profiles. One such platform is Eazyviral.com. “We use a pool of 20,000 Trustpilot profiles, each created from unique devices and IP addresses of real users worldwide. This makes the reviews look organic,” an Eazyviral chatbot noted when replying to FinanceMagnates.com's queries.

The fake review platform even offers strategically planned review posts upon request and can “spread out the reviews over time (e.g., 1–5 daily). This gradual approach mimics natural user behaviour.” The platform offers a single Trustpilot review for $10, but if bought in bulk, companies can receive up to a 46 per cent discount: the cost of 1,000 “five-star rating positive reviews” is $3,997, while 2,000 “five-star rating positive reviews” cost $7,500.

Eazyviral is just one of many fake review providers available on the internet. FinanceMagnates.com detected over a dozen platforms offering fake Trustpilot reviews, with names like Fuzz Business Reviews, Boosbe, Procraigslist, and Buy GMB Reviews.

Many freelancers also advertise fake reviews on popular platforms like Fiverr and Upwork. Social media giants, including Facebook, Instagram, X and Telegram, have become hotspots for advertising fake reviewing services

4️⃣ Can Review Platforms Be Trusted?

Platforms like Trustpilot work to detect fake reviews, but the challenge is massive.

Some firms may even pay for “reputation management” services that filter out negative feedback while pushing positive ones to the top.

— Prop Firm Journal (@PropFirmJournal) March 11, 2025

Cease and Desist Letters, Take Down Notices

Trustpilot claims that it has “zero tolerance toward fake reviews.” The open review platform allows both companies and users to flag potentially fake reviews.

“Where we detect fake reviews, we’ll remove them and take action,” Trustpilot noted on its legal page. “If a business has a paid subscription with Trustpilot and continues to breach our guidelines after we’ve sent them a formal notice, we’ll terminate their subscription.”

Trustpilot took action against Binance for fake reviews and temporarily disabled the crypto exchange's TrustScore, although its profile has now been restored. In another incident, the review platform suspended the prop firm Funding Pips’ profile, citing “an increase in reviews related to recent media attention,” which allegedly resulted in an influx of biased reviews against the firm.

Furthermore, Trustpilot has put up a “warning” label on the profile page of prop firm Blue Guardian and suspended the company's ratings. The actions against Blue Guardian are similar to those against Hola Prime.

Trustpilot's actions are not limited to fake reviews but also extend to providers of fake reviews. According to numbers the company shared with FinanceMagnates.com, it has identified and requested shutdowns for almost 5,000 review seller sites or social profiles since July 2024. Out of those, over 250 were subsequently taken down.

“We condemn the trade in selling fake reviews, and when we’re made aware of review sellers, we investigate the site in question and decide what action to take,” Trustpilot told us.“That could involve sending them legal ‘cease and desist’ letters, court action, and issuing ‘take down’ notices to hosting providers to get these sites taken down.”

Eazyviral also considers the limitations of its services and adds: “While no service can provide a 100% guarantee against detection, our methods are designed to minimise risks and maintain the integrity of your page.”

According to Trustpilot, it has a team of over 88 agents and legal experts to enforce its guidelines and has removed more than 3.3 million fake reviews in 2023 and 2.6 million in 2022. However, it is questionable how effective Trustpilot’s actions against such fake reviews are.

The5ers, one of the top and most established prop trading firms, told Finance Magnates that Trustpilot changed its review-sharing process about a year ago, scrapping the verification process for authenticating reviewers.

“Probably a year ago, Trustpilot changed its model,” said The5ers CEO, Saul Lokier. “Before, it was easier for companies to get information from the reviewer to verify the genuineness of the comments and take action. If we had shortcomings in customer support, we would have fixed them, but then Trustpilot changed its model, and not knowing who is behind the review is very frustrating.”

Trustpilot’s process of addressing reviews flagged by verified platforms is slow. One prop firm confirmed to FinanceMagnates.com that Trustpilot often takes more than a week to address flagged fake reviews and lacks transparency. Also, during that investigation process, the flagged reviews stay online. It is unclear how the review platform determines which flagged reviews to take down and which to keep.

Trustpilot said that it has “teams of content integrity and fraud investigation specialists who work in tandem with our automated systems to ensure that reviews are as accurate and valuable as possible on the platform.” However, due to the fake review issue, many companies also question the trustworthiness of Trustpilot.

“Trustpilot is not so trustworthy because many people can come there and give either a good or a bad review, and it's not necessarily an objective review,” Lokier added.

Do NOT trust your business on @Trustpilot! Despite countless attempts through their flagging procedures about a extremely damaging, slanderous review of our business from someone who clearly has the wrong company (not even in this country), they will not remove. TP is a disgrace

— Ryan Taylor (@RyanMarkTaylor) March 10, 2025

Attack with Negative Reviews

Fake reviews do not always benefit prop firms. There have been multiple instances where prop trading platforms became targets of individuals and coordinated groups that posted negative reviews against them, often attempting to blackmail them.

In the case of prop trading firm Alpha Capital Group, FinanceMagnates.com noticed a single person writing multiple negative reviews on Trustpilot. “We monitor all Trustpilot reviews and always work within the Trustpilot platform's processes,” said George Kohler, Managing Director at Alpha Capital Group, a UK-based prop firm. “A previous issue was detected involving fake reviews instigated by a disgruntled customer, which we worked with Trustpilot to resolve.”

“We have faced these kinds of situations,” confirmed Lokier, addressing the problem of targeted negative campaigns. “Suddenly, many comments come from one country or region at once. It is very frustrating that the Trustpilot algorithm allows such reviews in the first place.”

Pip Farm’s CEO, James Glyde, recently raised his voice on social media against a strategy used by some coordinated groups to exploit different prop platforms. The groups often blackmail prop firms if their payouts are rejected, threatening to post a barrage of negative reviews on Trustpilot and other social media platforms.

Additionally, scammers have taken hold of Trustpilot and often target distressed reviewers. Last year, CySEC (the financial services regulator in Cyprus) issued a warning against fraudsters impersonating regulatory representatives on Trustpilot. These scammers fabricated posts by posing as users who purportedly reported incidents of financial distress, following which they claim that CySEC officers or representatives contacted them, demanding fees in exchange for facilitating the recovery of investment losses in companies regulated by CySEC.

“Industry-Wide Challenge”

The problem of coordinated fake reviews is not limited to prop platforms; retail brokers also face it.

EBC Financial Group’s Global Public Relations Lead, Douglas Chew, described it as an “industry-wide challenge” and said: “Negative campaigns can be coordinated efforts—it’s something brokers across the board have had to contend with.”

Jean Philippe, Board Advisor for Corporate Governance and Sustainability at Ultima Markets, also confirmed the issue of fake negative reviews: “Like many brokers, we’ve encountered situations where reviews don’t always reflect genuine trader experiences. While most feedback is honest, there have been cases where we’ve noticed patterns of misleading or coordinated reviews. When that happens, we follow Trustpilot’s guidelines to report anything that appears inaccurate.”

While Ultima Markets and others are relatively new brands in the CFDs trading industry, established broker TMGM has also witnessed Trustpilot review manipulation. TMGM’s Head of Partners, Daniel Kruger, said: “While we acknowledge some potential for review manipulation in our industry, we combat this through transparent communication and a genuine commitment to customer service.”

In the next article, we will discuss the great lengths to which brokers and prop firms go to maintain their Trustpilot ratings.