Parsa traced the job posting to a Belkin employee, Michael Bayard, a "business development representative" for the company in Los Angeles, and posted images of the original ad along with Bayard's Linked-in profile. (Network World blogger Brad Reese has .) Parsa said Bayard had created dozens of these offers.

Belkin president Mark Reynoso posted a Sunday acknowledging the incident on the company Web site. "Belkin does not participate in, nor does it endorse, unethical practices like this," he wrote. "We know that people look to online user reviews for unbiased opinions from fellow users and instances like this challenge the implicit trust that is placed in this interaction. We regard our responsibility to our user community as sacred, and we are extremely sorry that this happened." He says this is an "isolated incident."

The letter says the company is working to remove all of the relevant postings on MechanicalTurk, and working with partners to identify and remove any resulting reviews.

Reynoso identified the central issue for Belkin and its customers as one of "lost trust" and pledged to work to restore it.

The letter led to other revelations or at least claims of revelations. Gizmodo.com editor Jason Chen the text of a letter that asserts Bayard's pay-for-praise scam is just one of many similarly deceptive, and long-standing practices at Belkin. One alleged technique was to give bona fide reviewers Belkin products with custom firmware designed to mask known problems. In his post, Chen said the letter was from a Belkin employee, but he doesn't explain how he knows that. So far, Chen has not responded to an inquiry asking how he had determined that the letter writer works for Belkin.