Why would someone create a fake business listing? WSJ found out that there are a variety of motives behind such scams. Some businesses will create fake profiles for their competitors listing wrong phone numbers or addresses. Scam artists will also impersonate legitimate businesses and lure unsuspecting customers. One federal employee profiled in the story was conned by a fake repair service she found through a Google query. The con artist impersonated a company contractor, did a poor job and then charged the victim almost twice the amount of previous repairs.

Google has responded to the claims in the WSJ report by taking down the identified fake listings. The company said it’s added new safeguards for “high-risk categories” in its business listings. These include contractors and repair services, which customers normally only flock to in an emergency and have little time to research. This isn’t the search engine’s first response to deception on this service: Last year, Google took down more than 3 million false business profiles and disabled 150,000 accounts used to make them.

Currently, creating a business listing on Google is free and relatively easy. Businesses can verify their listing’s address and phone number via SMS message, a phone call or a postcard mailed to their listed location. Such a simple vetting process no doubt lead to Google Map’s enormous growth — currently 150 million businesses are on Google My Business, compared to 25 million businesses on Whitepages. But the ease of joining also opened the door for a wave of fraud, which now Google will have to deal with regularly. We reached out to Google for a comment on the matter, and we’ll update this story when we hear back.