On the Fourth of July, Augustus Doricko, 25, was sitting in his office in El Segundo, California, when massive floods began washing over Central Texas, killing 111 people, including 30 children, at last count. The hard-packed clay of Texas Hill Country makes the area susceptible to flooding. When the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry, which hit southern Mexico last week, moved into the area, Hill Country didn’t stand a chance.

But that’s not what many people wanted to believe. And soon, Augustus, who runs a cloud-seeding start-up called Rainmaker, found himself the target of a conspiracy theory according to which he was responsible for the biblical floods rushing through Hill Country.

“Meet AUGUSTUS DORICKO, a 25-YEAR-OLD TECH BRO and THIEL FELLOW, who founded the weather modification startup RAINMAKER,” wrote one prominent conspiracy influencer on X, in a post that received 2.6 million views.