Two separate cases were filed against Gaurav and his wife Sharon Srivastava in California for fraud and fraudulent misrepresentations.
LONDON/CALIFORNIA: Indian businessman Gaurav Kumar Srivastava, who lied to Google to deindex a story that exposed him as a scammer and fraudster who misused the name of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to defraud a Dutch oil trader, faces two separate lawsuits for fraud.
Last month, two respected former Wall Street Journal reporters and Pulitzer nominees, Bradley Hope and Tom Wright of the Brazen Whalehunting Project, announced they were taking legal action against Gaurav for lying to Google to discredit their story about how Gaurav posed as a agent of the main authorities of the United States. spy group, the CIA, to carry out an international scam against Geneva-based Dutch oil trader Niels Troost.
Two separate cases have been filed against Gaurav and his wife Sharon Srivastava in California for fraud and fraudulent misrepresentations, among other causes of action.
A multi-action lawsuit for damages under California law was filed in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles, against Gaurav, Scott Davalos and the company Veecon Biotech. The complaint has been filed by Jolie Slaton, who, through her entity “Medical Innovation Partners International”, entered into sales contracts, interacted and carried out transactions with the three defendants.
More specifically, Gaurav claimed ownership of the intellectual property rights to a world-class medical device that would enable the detection of various diseases, such as cancer, with saliva testing, similar to 'Elizabeth Holmes' infamous Theranos testing device.
Contrary to their fraudulent misrepresentations, the defendants did not own the intellectual property rights to the medical device and did not possess any license to sell and distribute the technology. Furthermore, the defendants did not have any partnership or business relationship with the developer of these medical technologies, as they had falsely claimed.
The five causes of action detailed in the complaint against the defendants consist of breach of contract, intentional misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, promise without intent to perform, and fraud.
In another case, both Guarav and Sharon have been sued by an award-winning designer in California Superior Court for breach of contract, abuse of process and theft by deception in a high-profile case.
The lawsuit in Los Angeles County, California, was filed by Meredith Kleinman through her attorneys at the Tesser Grossman law firm against the couple who have been involved in several controversies, including allegations of fraud and deception.
Meredith Kleinman, who has worked on a wide range of residential projects, including celebrity homes, claimed in the lawsuit that she met Sharon and Gaurav in January 2023, when they met at Srivastavas' home located at 14180 Rustic Lane in Pacific Palisades. .
According to the claim, Sharon Gaurav explained to Kleinman that Sharon wanted Kleinman to provide the interior design of the Property but allow Sharon to take full credit for the design, to fulfill Sharon's desire to become an interior designer.
Gaurav also requested that Kleinman purchase household items totaling approximately $279,359, resulting in a profit margin of approximately $55,872. Kleinman also incurred approximately $50,081 in taxes and shipping on household items she purchased at the defendants' request, according to the lawsuit.
The contract also included Kleinman attending workplace meetings, discussing Sharon's specific requests for each room designed by Kleinman; distribution of rooms and furniture, and elevations when necessary; construction monitoring; and respond to Sharon's multiple daily text messages and requests.
Kleinman says in her claim that Sharon and Gaurav breached the contract by, among other things, failing to pay and refusing to pay: (a) the design fees she earned; (b) the margins obtained from it; and (c) reimbursement for purchases made at the request of Srivastavas and that, as a direct and immediate result of Defendants' conduct, Kleinman has suffered damages in the amount of approximately $111,329.
Bradley Hope Tom Wright had revealed how Gaurav used a creative lie to complain to Google that the award-winning investigative journalism site had stolen the content of a story about Gaurav from another blog. Using Google's copyright policy to his advantage, Gaurav used a fraudulent technique to deindex his story, according to journalists.
This involved pasting the text of the article into a blog post on hosting sites Tumblr or Medium and then dating the posts, making them appear to have been published before the Project Brazen article. Gaurav then used aliases or fake names to file a copyright complaint with Google to deindex the articles.
The investigative journalism site said: “We are contesting this fraudulent takedown request to ensure our story appears on search engines again.”
According to the Brazen Project investigation, Niels Troost was introduced in the summer of 2022 through a mutual contact with Gaurav, who claimed to have very good contacts with Washington's power circles and also with the country's main spy agency, the INC.
At the time, the oil trader was in a state of increasing panic because someone purporting to be a U.S. government informant had falsely led him to believe that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was investigating him and his Swiss-based commodities trading company. , Paramount Energy & Commodities SA.
Troost asked Gaurav for help. Gaurav assured him that he would deal with the FBI and made Troost believe that he was an “unofficial cover” or NOC (pronounced “knock”) for the CIA, operating at a high level among a total of 30 NOCs around the world. . . Gaurav presented a dubious proposal: if Troost could make Gaurav a partner in the business, moving 50% of Paramount's shares to a Delaware-incorporated company controlled by Gaurav, and domiciling Paramount in the US, Troost would then be safe as part of a state-sanctioned network to gather intelligence on behalf of the United States. Gaurav stipulated that the transfer must be made through the American law firm BakerHostetler.
According to legal documents, it was in April 2023 that Troost hired investigators to perform due diligence on Gaurav and discovered a chilling history of fraud lawsuits and unpaid invoices spanning several years.
Seeing intelligence reports on Gaurav's alleged fraud, Troost realized that Gaurav had no connections with the CIA and was just a huckster who cobbled together false stories to feign an air of importance, exclusivity and impunity. Gaurav's fraudulent scheme failed on May 10, 2023 and is now subject to legal action.
