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Sunday Riley's CEO directed employees to write fake Sephora reviews

Employees were told to create fake accounts, hide their IP addresses, and downvote negative reviews. The FTC banned the practice; no fine was imposed.

Sunday Riley · Sunday Riley Modern Skincare · 2019-10-21

What happened

Sunday Riley Modern Skincare, a US skincare brand sold at Sephora, had employees post fake product reviews on Sephora.com from November 2015 to August 2017. An internal email, later leaked on Reddit in 2018, instructed employees to write at least three reviews of two products using fake user accounts.

The email directed employees to hide their IP addresses so the reviews could not be traced to company headquarters, to vary their fake identities by age and location, and to "dislike" negative reviews of Sunday Riley products so that enough downvotes would remove them from view.

The FTC filed a complaint in October 2019 and reached a consent order banning the company and its CEO from posting fake reviews or failing to disclose employee endorsements. The settlement imposed no monetary penalty and did not require the company to admit past misconduct. The final order was approved in November 2020.

Why it happened

  • The CEO treated employee-written fake reviews as a low-cost launch tactic, and the instructions to hide IP addresses show the practice was deliberate, not accidental.
  • Sephora's review system had no mechanism to detect coordinated employee posting, so the fake reviews sat alongside genuine ones for years.
  • The brand's defence — that competitors post negative reviews and it would be "physically impossible" to fake a fraction of its reviews — conceded the practice while minimising its scale.
What it costFTC consent order; no fine; public reputational damageembarrassing

The lesson

Fake reviews are a compliance risk, not a growth hack — the FTC treats undisclosed employee endorsements as deceptive advertising, and a leaked email makes the evidence public.

Aftermath

Sunday Riley continued operating and selling at Sephora. The case was one of the FTC's first enforcement actions against fake product reviews and became a reference point for later actions against deceptive online marketing. Commissioner Rohit Chopra warned that the lack of a financial penalty sent the wrong signal to other brands.

Sources

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