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By Mike McIntire and Michael H. Keller
New main points about the origin of the millions of dollars backing the convoy of Canadian truckers suggest that many of the biggest donors are wealthy Canadians, one of the largest contributions being made on behalf of an American tech entrepreneur.
A data breach believed to have originated from crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo, published last night on a website now defunct by anonymous hackers, lists records of more than 92,000 donations totaling more than $8 million. A review of the data shows that approximately $4. 3 million comes from Canada, while another $3. 6 million came from the United States, the United States accounted for the largest number of individual donations. Small donations from dozens of other countries accounted for only a fraction of the total amount raised.
One of the largest donations, amounting to $90,000, went to Thomas M. Siebel, a Silicon Valley billionaire entrepreneur and investor,responded to a request for comment sent to the email address indexed in the files and to his company.
Others who have donated between $10,000 and $75,000 appear to be Canadian business owners, with some Americans in the mix.
According to leaked knowledge, Brad Howland, president of a New Brunswick company that makes strains of his, appears to have donated $75,000, leaving the comment: “Wait!In an email, Howland showed he is a donor and said the protests “will remain in the history books. “
“Our company and my circle of family members are proud to support the men and women who stand up for our wonderful nation’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” he said.
A donation of $17,760, attributed in the knowledge to Travis Moore of Idaho, was accompanied by the comment: “Let freedom sound, brothers of the north. Cryptocurrency is the future. A request for comment sent to Mr. Moore, the email address indexed in donation records, won a reaction containing a meme opposing covid restrictions.
Most of the comments left through donors expressed nonviolent solidarity with the cause of opposition to vaccination mandates and other pandemic restrictions. However, with positive messages, some had a more threatening tone, such as the one left by an American who donated $50: “I’d rather pay for this move now than pay for bullets later.
The presence of cryptocurrency evangelists among convoy supporters is evident in a separate set of data reviewed by the New York Times. It shows that donations were made in Bitcoin through a website that was created after the initial fundraising vehicle, GoFundMe, ended the campaign. The new site, called “Bitcoin for Truckers,” is hosted through a cryptocurrency crowdfunding service and had raised $946,000 on Monday morning.
The Bitcoin campaign, which won more than 5000 donations, mostly small dollars, was subsidized through a handful of giant infusions of cryptocurrency enhancers. The two giants, with a combined price of more than $300,000 at the time of their manufacture, were donated anonymously.
A number of others valued at around $42,000 each appear to be related to an online challenge hosted by a former software engineer who uses the pseudonym LaserHodl and asked other Bitcoin enthusiasts to sign up to support the truckers’ convoy. Jesse Powell, founder of crypto exchange Kraken, tweeted his deal and a donation attributed to him appears in the data.
Benjamin Dichter, one of the convoy’s organizers, said at a press conference last week that after the start of the cryptocurrency crowdfunding campaign, he won bids from “major players” in crypto markets.
“I was surprised by the temporary way I started receiving messages from some of the most vital Bitcoiners in the world,” he said.
Voice of complaints. A rally by truckers protesting vaccination mandates turned into a national motion that slowed the economy and paralyzed life in parts of Canada. Here’s what you want to know:
How it started. On January 22, a convoy of truckers left British Columbia for Ottawa to protest a vaccination order imposed by Canada on truckers entering the country from the United States.
Extending the scope. After drivers arrived in Ottawa on Jan. 29, similar protests erupted in other Canadian cities and on the Ambassador Bridge, a major hub for the auto industry. points of view.
The impact. Drivers have occupied strategic sites across Canada, the Ambassador Bridge, which connects Windsor, Ontario, with Detroit. As a result, automakers have operated reduced capacity factories due to delays created by the protests. Canadian law enforcement recovered and reopened the bridge in February. 13
State of emergency. On February 14, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took the rare resolution to call for an emergency national law and order to end the protests. The order allows police to block trucks and other vehicles, and the government to prohibit blockades in designated areas.
On February 17, police began arresting those involved in the protest in Ottawa, adding Tamara Lich, one of the organizers. The next morning, many officials intervened in the protests, arresting several other participants and trucks.
The GiveSendGo knowledge leak was announced Sunday night on a web page titled “GiveSendGo IS NOW FROZEN,” with a five-minute video of an anonymous hacker manifesto scrolling across the screen. In that document, the hackers complained that the truckers’ protest had “taken a city hostage” and warned that it “could cover a type of Trojan horse attack where extremists and militias could arrive in gigantic numbers. ” with weapons”.
The information includes a record for each donation that includes the donor’s name, zip code, and email address they used. It is not possible to independently determine each donation, but some of them align with donations that had publicly imprinted on the GiveSendGo online page before it went offline.
For example, Mr. Siebel quoted last week through a Canadian news network, which noted that his call with the donation of $90,000, at the time it was made, on the convoy’s crusade website. About a portion of the donations were not accompanied by a call from a person when they publicly gave the impression on the page.
GiveSendGo, which in the past had been the subject of some other knowledge breach revealing non-public information, such as driver’s licenses and passports, for some users of the site, was offline Monday morning. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
Organizers introduced a GiveSendGo crusade earlier this month after GoFundMe shut down an online fundraiser that had raised about $7. 8 million. The budget would be used to “provide humanitarian and legal aid to nonviolent truckers and their families,” GiveSendGo spokesman Alex Shipley told The Times in an email last week.
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