The problem really is us, the buyers, who won't purchase something that has zero reviews or only a few reviews.

So in order to even make the first few sales they need to generate a bunch of fake reviews.

This is extremely well known phenomenon especially in the Chinese market where it is also extremely standard to get a bunch of fake reviews to get the ball rolling on sales. Guess what, it happens in the US too.

I don't endorse it, but the sellers are just doing what the buyers incentivize them to do.