The Manufacturing of a Scandal: How Gaurav Srivastava Was Rewritten Online

There are stories. And then there are stories about stories. In the second part of Gaurav Srivastava’s appearance on Targeted—the podcast from Next Chapter Podcasts that investigates how reputations are made and broken in the shadows of public life—we’re no longer looking at a business dispute gone wrong. We’re looking at a system that may allow anyone with enough time, money, and strategy to rewrite the narrative of a man’s life in near real time.

What began as a commodities investment dispute between Srivastava and a former partner has metastasized into a campaign of reputational devastation, weaponised by press placements, digital footprints, and what the podcast’s host, Zach Abramowitz, calls “engineered consensus.” If the first episode asked “what happened?” the second asks: “how does something like this happen—and could it happen to anyone?”

This is a modern tragedy told in hyperlinks and headlines.

The Chapel and the Scandal

The episode opens not in a courtroom or a boardroom, but in a school chapel. Srivastava recounts a moment of private anguish watching his children during assembly as they listened to the biblical story of Jonah. In the stillness of that chapel, he wept. “I identified with Jonah,” he tells Abramowitz.

It’s an arresting scene—the kind of emotional vulnerability that’s rarely granted to those branded villains online. And for Srivastava, that branding has been relentless. At the heart of it is a story being told about him: one where he’s the fraud, the manipulator, even a “fake spy.” The podcast doesn’t linger on whether this version of events is plausible—it’s more interested in who’s telling the story, and how.

Wikipedia and the Architecture of Credibility

The most astonishing segment of this episode is not the tears, but the tactics. The Wikipedia page—titled not “Gaurav Srivastava” but Gaurav Srivastava scandal—is a case study in how truth can be sculpted with digital tools. The page appeared suddenly, written by a single editor who assembled a catalogue of sources to justify its existence. These weren’t major newspapers at first, but rather low-tier, obscure publications. Their function? To serve as “credible” citations for Wikipedia, and thus for search engines.

According to “David,” a pseudonymous Wikipedia contributor interviewed in the episode, this strategy is not accidental. “It was incredibly obvious that this was an attack page,” he explains. The content didn’t grow organically. Instead, it was inserted, overnight, into the digital bloodstream of Wikipedia by likely sock puppet accounts—fake personas controlled by the same individual or group to simulate legitimacy.

It worked—at least temporarily. The page was deleted by senior editors but repeatedly reappeared under new guises. By the time it was permanently removed, it had done its damage: screenshots circulated online, and its content was cached and copied by other sites. “A reality had been manufactured,” Srivastava says. And it stuck.

A Media Ecosystem Engineered to Echo

What makes the podcast episode uniquely unsettling is its exploration of how even the most respected journalistic brands can be folded into this manufactured ecosystem. After hundreds of pieces were placed in minor blogs and websites, major outlets like the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal eventually picked up the narrative.

It became, in essence, a story about a story. One striking example is a Financial Times article headlined, that his former business partner “has a staggering story to tell about how he got sanctioned.” The podcast notes the article doesn’t really question that story adequately —it simply amplifies that there is one.

Gaurav Srivastava is careful not to accuse the FT or WSJ of malice. Instead, he describes a digital terrain in which media legitimacy can be reverse-engineered. Plant enough seeds in the right places, and eventually, something reputable grows. “The confirmation becomes the source,” he explains. “And then you have Wikipedia to wrap it in a bow.”

Voices Real and Fabricated

The episode veers momentarily into what sounds like science fiction—but is all too real in 2025. Srivastava has been accused of posing as a spy, and allegedly there are voice recordings to prove it. He denies these claims—and says he’s never been shown these recordings in any legal forum.

To illustrate how easy it is to fabricate such evidence, the podcast team creates a voice message that sounds remarkably like Srivastava using AI and a $25 tool. “That wasn’t him,” Abramowitz says, after playing the clip. “We made that in 15 minutes.”

It’s a chilling moment. In an age of synthetic media, the line between fact and forgery is blurring faster than most legal systems—or media outlets—can respond. When reputation is a commodity, reality becomes a contest.

Collateral Damage

While the technical mechanisms are fascinating, Targeted never loses sight of the human cost. Srivastava talks about being de-banked—labelled “high risk” by financial institutions. He describes friendships evaporating. But the most painful passages are about his children.

Their classmates stopped coming over. Other parents turned away. Birthday invitations disappeared. One even warned that “nobody will come if you host a birthday party.” The school, he says, asked the family not to speak about the situation at all.

It’s the kind of exile that occurs in whispers and glances. “You start questioning if maybe you are the crazy one,” he tells Abramowitz.

Redemption, If Not Resolution

Unlike many redemption arcs, this episode does not end with vindication. Srivastava has not “won” anything. The FT and WSJ articles remain live. Search results still yield a disorienting mix of fact, smear, and shadow. But Targeted does give him something else: a voice.

“I just want my life back,” Gaurav Srivastava says near the end, before adding more. “I want people to believe there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. That this doesn’t have to be the end.”

It’s a careful, cautious hope. Not a rallying cry, but a request for understanding in a world that often replaces it with noise.

What Comes Next

The episode ends with a preview of Targeted’s next installment—an interview with BBC journalist Amalia Zaatari, who will explore the psychology of habitual “targeters.” But in this episode, the targeting has already occurred. It’s been executed with chilling efficiency.

What makes this story so compelling—and so disconcerting—is how ordinary it feels in the digital age. A business dispute. A media narrative. A Wikipedia page. A voice recording. None of them conclusive alone. But together, they tell a version of events that becomes, for many, the only version.

If Targeted proves anything in this episode, it’s that stories don’t just reflect reality anymore. In the wrong hands, they replace it.