Shill reviewer creating sock puppet accounts and re-reviewing periodically

Hi moderators (@Jan in particular),

It seems that I have someone who is using sock puppet accounts to make the same complaints over and over (probably a competitor–no customer I know of would go to this kind of trouble after a single negative review). It’s not even about the repository plugin, it’s about the premium modules that aren’t even sold here.

Here is my evidence:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/expensive-4?replies=2

It’s basically the EXACT same thing as this review from August:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/add-ons-3#post-

They left the same reviews on AWPCP as well.

Three things strike me as curious here:
– They use identical language in both (include the formatting of currency using a 50$ instead of $50 nomenclature–sort of a unique signature of a single person here)
– They complain using the exact same phrases “does an ok job” and “As for the free plugin, it does an ok job”
– Each account attacks the same 2 plugins (AWPCP and Business Directory). For good measure, they go and praise one other on the latest one)

In one of their reviews (https://wordpress.org/support/topic/whats-up-wordpress?replies=5#post-), for a “new account” and one that hasn’t done any reviews, they have a curious insider knowledge of the review process that they followed to “avoid being labeled a shill”: “I have used the free plugin, as well as another of this authors free plugins and I base my comments on actual usage of the products. I intentionally did not mention any other plugins to make sure it didn’t appear I was shilling for a competitor.”

This seems strongly suspicious to me–I can’t prove this since I can’t see the email addresses or the source IP addresses of the reviews, but it would be worth checking into if you can look at that.

I have no problem accepting negative reviews on my plugin and will respond accordingly to them. This just seems like a competitor trying to bash other plugins for their own gain. I’d appreciate any investigation you can do here. This looks like a repeat of an issue I posted several months ago here: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-can-you-deal-with-review-shillers?replies=13 Just with different accounts and lacking the praise for the competitor.

Thanks for your time!