Restaurant owner libels critic...

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Looks like this restaurant will be going belly-up...

Restaurant owner Marisol Simoes guilty of libel, created fake sex site profile of customer who gave bad review

By Jordana Divon | Shine On – Tue, 11 Sep, 2012 1:32 PM EDT.. .

The owner of an Ottawa restaurant is guilty of libel after a 2-year ordeal with a former customer. (Thinkstock …Scrolling through online restaurant reviews can often be the great decision maker.

Because if it boils down to two restaurants you've never tried before, sometimes the presence of one too many bits of negative feedback in one place can propel you straight into the dining room of the other.

That's why conscientious owners tend to be a fixed presence on their own Yelp or Urbanspoon pages. They read every comment, sometimes responding to less-than-positive reviews with apologies, explanations and invitations to give their service or food another shot.

But as the Ottawa Citizen reports, one restaurant owner took things to the other extreme.

A pair of bad online reviews against Mambo Nuevo Latino restaurant resulted in a two-year harassment campaign by owner Marisol Simoes.

On Thursday, Simoes was convicted of defamatory libel against the reviewer, Elayna Katz. According to the charges, Simoes was accused of setting up a lewd dating profile and sending sexually explicit emails to Katz's bosses under a fake Gmail addresses in Katz's name.

http://ca.shine.yahoo.com/blogs/shine-on/restaurant-owner-marisol-simoes-guilty-libel-created-fake-173223973.html

[reflection]

1. I read the Yahoo article and the cited Ottawa Sun article.

That lady deserved to be found guilty. The sad thing is that most people know when you have a public rating and reviewing system, there are always going to be a few outliers here and there. I always look for 1) number of reviews and 2) the average rating. If the number of reviews is high the rating will generally be accurate. If the number of reviews is low I read them closely to see if I can detect any bias.

Regardless, to freak out that bad over one review shows a stunning lack of judgment and morals.