Hello Gordon, can you give more information on how the "review" campaign is being conducted? Maybe the reason you find little takers on your question is because it's a loaded question with many undisclosed, or explored, variables thus making it a difficult question to fully qualify, but I'll give it a try.
You're initial question is:
"how is this benefiting him in regards to SEO?"
I can't say it is. Do you know if in fact your client has benefited from the reviews considering how they have been obtained, and how has he benefited? Has your client been engaging in this activity long enough that you can track when he started this campaign and benchmark his pre-campaign performance, and have you measured improvements over time, if any?
I hope I'm not veering off topic.
The case scenario that follows may not apply to you, but I know of an auto shop that encouraged its customers to give positive reviews by giving away free oil changes. They had a computer on their front counter and when a customer came in for service they would solicit the review with the enticement of a free oil change. In this case the reviews were all on the same review site which was kept open at all times on the computer ready for quick access. In this case all the reviews originated from the same IP address, even if each review started with a new browser session, they still shared the same IP address. See where this is going?
I agree with Oleg who stated:
"G looks at reviews from a number of different website when determining rankings..."
I would think G's algo would be smart enough to see the pattern (i.e direct visits, same browser, same review site, same IP address, etc). Visit "freeindex" and look at any reviews you suspect having been paid for, do you see a warning (!)(Info) on the upper right corner of the review? If the review was written on the same computer, this is what you'll see:
"This review has been written on a computer with the same IP address as someone else who has reviewed this company"?
Of course this is a blatant case. Perhaps the reviews your client is getting originate from different IP addresses, even then there are other variables that can be used by a search engine to flag reviews suspected as not being organic in origin.
As for the effects on AdWords costs, I fail to see a correlation. Am I missing something?
In my opinion the effort was flawed from inception. As for ethics, some very good people often find themselves crossing the fine thin gray line of ethical practices into the unethical.