In the summer of 2018, staff of the Chicago Tribune awoke to find a story they didn’t recognize on the newspaper’s website. The article, multiple sources say, had something to do with a purse carried by Meghan Markle, the royal also known as the Duchess of Sussex. Advertisements frequently masquerade as news articles at the bottom of actual journalism — this is the phenomenon some have dubbed “the chumbox.
But at BestReviews, no one noticed the links until months after they were inserted, according to a person who worked at the company. The idea that Faw allegedly had created competing reviews sites — some of which directly ripped off the work of BestReviews — while still working at the company he helped build was shocking. “No matter how you feel about a company, who does this?” they said.