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GiveSendGo, the Christian crowdfunding site that raised more than $8.7 million for the Freedom Convoy, slammed Canada’s Trudeau administration as a ‘group of terrorist’ and called on the FBI to investigate the hackers who shut down its site on Sunday and released the information of its more than 92,000 donors.
The company’s founder, Jacob Wells, told Fox News that his company is standing behind freedom and democracy in its support of the Freedom Convoy movement, where Canadians led by truckers are protesting their country’s COVID-19 mandates.
‘This is the moment for them to rally, not be intimidated and say, ‘Yes, I support freedom. Yes, I support peaceful protests 100 percent,’ he said.
‘It’s the bedrock of democracy, and it’s the side that’s opposing this that’s really a group of terrorists. They’re instilling terror. That’s their goal.”
He added that Sunday’s hack of the donation site was a ‘well-orchestrated’ political doxing effort to hurt the Freedom Convoy and their cause.
‘This is illegal, and these people should be going to jail,’ Wells said. ‘The FBI – I mean, it’s surprising that we haven’t heard from any investigative services. We will be reaching out ourselves to just see that there’s some investigation into this. This is completely unacceptable.’
The attack on GiveSendGo on Sunday night redirected visitors to a taunting video from the Disney film Frozen, and a message slamming the Freedom Convoy as an ‘insurrection’ led by ‘known extremists.’
The hack has already had an impact on Canadians who donated – a top political aide to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Marion Isabeau-Ringuette, was forced out of her job when a local news outlet QP Briefing outed her to his office for making a $100 donation.
Canada’s national broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, has gone through the list of 92,844 donors to contact and publicly out them.
It revealed that the former leader of the country’s Progressive Conservative Party Ches Crosbie made an $800 donation. He was unapologetic when confronted by CBC journalists, saying: ‘Indefinite states of emergency, such as we are under in most of Canada, are a dangerous thing, a very dangerous thing. I support the right of peaceful protest and I see the Freedom Convoy as a peaceful protest.’
The CBC also outed a prominent business owner in London, Ontario, as giving the largest single donation to the Freedom Convoy. Holden Rhodes, who owns Killarney Mountain Lodge, donated $25,000.
Another donor outed in the leak was Tammy Giuliani, owner of Stella Luna Gelato Cafe in Ottawa, who was forced to shut down her business after she received an onslaught of threats over her $250 donation.
GiveSendGo founder Jacob Wells (above) called on the FBI to investigate the hack on his company’s website that outed more than 92,000 donors of the Freedom Convoy
Wells said his company is ramping up its cybersecurity after Sunday’s attack took down the website that raised more than $8.7 million for the truckers
The attack on Sunday night redirected visitors to a taunting video from the Disney film Frozen, and a message slamming the Freedom Convoy as an ‘insurrection’ led by ‘known extremists’
The US-based Christian fundraising site became the main conduit for donations to support the Freedom Convoy after GoFundMe buckled to pressure to shut down another fundraiser that had raised some $10 million
The GiveSendGo website became the most popular way to support the Freedom Convoy after GoFundMe shut its donation page down, freezing the $10 million raised after it claimed the movement had turned violent following police reports from Ottawa, Canada.
Wells said that as the donation page for the Freedom Convoy was the largest the website had ever seen, it had been preparing for a cyberattack prior to Sunday, but the company was still caught off guard.
‘We find it unacceptable on our side that this happened and that’s why we’re pouring into bringing on the best, Wells told Fox, referring to the company’s plan to call out ‘ethical hackers’ to test the site’s weaknesses.
‘We never want to see this happen, and it’s horrific to us that it has,’ he said. ‘The target on our back is really big because we do allow freedom and many people, they don’t like that. They’re going to come after us as hard as we need to be better than we’ve ever been before, and we’re bringing in people to make that happen.’
Wells added that he believed the hackers were part of a ‘highly coordinated’ and ‘very sophisticated’ group intent on attacking the Freedom Convoy.
Frustration with the failure of Canadian police to lift blockades at the border and in the capital, along with scenes of protesters lounging in hot tubs near Parliament, ultimately drove Justin Trudeau to seek emergency powers earlier this week, sources told Reuters. Trudeau has been slammed by critics who accuse him of imposing ‘martial law’ to crush the protests over vaccine mandates and other pandemic restrictions
In a statement released on Tuesday, GiveSendGo said it was a dedicated team ‘aggressively focused on identifying these malicious actors and pursuing actions against their cybercrime.’
The FBI declined to comment on the incident.
The US Department of Justice did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment.
The leaked data from the hack has been used by Canadian journalists to out donors to their employers.
Marion Isabeau Ringuette, who was Ontario Solicitor General Sylvia Jones’s director of communications, lost her job 10 days after making a $100 donation, according to the Toronto Star.
After the donor list to a GiveSendGo campaign supporting the protests was stolen and leaked by hackers this week, Isabeau-Ringuette’s identity was apparently deciphered and reported to her employer, although she only used her initials when making the donation.
‘Ms. Isabeau-Ringuette no longer works for the Ontario government,’ Ivana Yelich, Ford’s executive director of media relations, told the Star.
‘We’re not commenting any further as this is a staffing matter.’
Isabeau-Ringuette did not immediately respond to an inquiry from DailyMail.com on Tuesday.
The local news outlet QP Briefing said that it had ‘brought the information to the attention of Isabeau-Ringuette and Premier Doug Ford’s office late Tuesday afternoon’.
Marion Isabeau-Ringuette was forced out of her job as a staffer for the Ontario provincial government after hackers revealed that she donated $100 to the Freedom Convoy protests earlier this month
The country’s national broadcaster, Canadian Broadcasting Company, has also gone through the list to contact and publicly out donors.
It revealed that the former leader of the country’s Progressive Conservative Party Ches Crosbie made an $800 donation. He was unapologetic when confronted by CBC journalists, saying: ‘Indefinite states of emergency, such as we are under in most of Canada, are a dangerous thing, a very dangerous thing. I support the right of peaceful protest and I see the Freedom Convoy as a peaceful protest.’
The CBC also outed a prominent business owner in London, Ontario, as giving the largest single donation to the Freedom Convoy. Holden Rhodes, who owns Killarney Mountain Lodge, donated $25,000.
He was just as unapologetic after being outed by the CBC, telling journalists: ‘The overreach on the last two years has been astounding, but in the last two weeks in Canada it has been absolutely alarming for anyone believes in a peaceful and free society,’ he said. ‘Government at all levels has to realize they are elected to represent the people of Canada rather than lock up and threaten to arrest people for exercising their legal rights of peaceful protest.’
Another donor outed in the leak was Tammy Giuliani, owner of Stella Luna Gelato Cafe in Ottawa, who was forced to shut down her business after she received an onslaught of threats over her $250 donation.
GiveSendGo said that the cyberattack was ‘highly coordinated’ and aimed at the Freedom Convoy for their protest of Canada’s COVID-19 mandates
Hundreds of Canadians continue to protest the countries COVID-19 mandates as they march on the streets of Ottawa outside the country’s parliament
The movement features a blockade of the streets by truckers fed up with the mandates
The truckers have gained support and opposition from fellow Canadians
GiveSendGo said it was a dedicated team ‘aggressively focused on identifying these malicious actors and pursuing actions against their cybercrime.’
The leaked data from the hacked GiveSendGo site revealed that most of the money raised for the Freedom Convoy did come from Canada and not the US – contradicting claims by the embattled Canadian prime minister.
Canadians donated $4.31 million to the anti-vaccine mandate protest while making up less than a third of all donors, compared with the $3.62 million given by Americans, according to the data. The rest of the $8.7 million came from the UK and several other countries.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had claimed that the majority of the donations came from foreign sources.
Americans did make the most individual donations to the Christian crowdfunding site, accounting for 56 percent of the 92,844 donors, compared to 29 percent of Canadians who donated.
While many donors remained anonymous, data from Sunday night’s breach by unidentified hackers revealed Silicon Valley investor Siebel donated $90,000 to the protesters, the New York Times reported.
Silicon Valley investor and tech billionaire Thomas Siebel was named in the list of 92,844 donors to the Freedom Convoy. According to the breach, he gave $90,000
Ben Pogue (left), a Texas-based construction magnate, was listed as a donor who gave $20,000 to the Freedom Convoy. Canadian Brad Howland, president of a New Brunswick-based company that makes pressure washers, donated $75,000, commenting: ‘Hold the line!’
Data from the breach revealed the Canadians only made up for 29 percent of the donor base. American’s made up 56 percent of the donor base, while UK donors made up 2 percent.
Ben Pogue, a Texas-based construction magnate, who had donated $200,000 for Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, also gifted $20,000 to the Freedom Convoy.
Siebel and Pogue did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment.
Several US donors also gave money through government emails that originated from NASA, the US Bureau of Prisons, the US Military, the Transportation Security Administration and the US Department of Justice.
One DOJ employees who donated through their government email gave $25 on two separate occasion, VICE reported.
Following the second donation, the person wrote: ‘Thank you, Truckers! It is working. Others have taken your lead like Australia, New Zealand, UK.
‘I think the reason all these blue states in the USA have stopped the mask mandates is there were rumors that truckers here in the USA were going to start a protest starting in CA to DC, and the local and federal governments did not want that. And it is an election year.’
Another donor using an email from the Delaware Transit Corporation wrote: ‘God Bless you all, need your spirit here in the US!’
A large donation also game from Travis Moore, an Idaho man, who donated $17,760 with the comment: ‘Let freedom ring, brothers of the north. Cryptocurrency is the future.’
Despite large donations from American’s, Canadian’s still made up the bulk of the support with Brad Howland, president of a New Brunswick-based company that makes pressure washers, donating $75,000, commenting: ‘Hold the line!’
Howland confirmed his donation listed in the leak and told the Times that the protest ‘will go down in the history books.’
Other large donations included $25,000 from an Ontario-based car dealership chain and $20,000 from an Ontario-based community and family support organization.
Several Canadian public employees also appeared on the list of donors, including a Quebec man who donated $102 from a Correctional Service of Canada email address, the National Post reported.
Trudeau stepped up his crackdown on Freedom Convoy demonstrators, with police now visiting the homes of people who post in support of the protests on Facebook and a woman forced out of her government job after donating to the demonstrations.
Trudeau on Wednesday was considering using his extraordinary powers under the Emergencies Act to establish ‘no-go’ zones in Ottawa to dispel the remaining protests in the nation’s capital.
Ottawa police fanned out among the demonstrators on Wednesday afternoon, distributing pamphlets saying protesters faced fines, arrests and vehicle seizures, and reading: ‘You must leave the area now’.
As the blockades in Alberta and Manitoba ended peacefully, all focus came to bear on the protest in Ottawa, now in its third week, with demonstrators paralyzing the streets over their demand for an end to vaccine mandates.
Frustration with the failure of Canadian police to lift blockades at the border and in the capital, along with scenes of protesters lounging in hot tubs near Parliament, ultimately drove Trudeau to seek emergency powers earlier this week, sources told Reuters.
Trudeau has been slammed by critics who accuse him of imposing ‘martial law’ to crush the protests over vaccine mandates and other pandemic restrictions.
An Ontario Provincial Police officer knocked on the very door of Nadine Ellis-Maffei’s farmhouse last week to hand her a card and a pamphlet after seeing her post to a Facebook group about the Freedom Convoy
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, appearing to buckle under pressure after weeks of sustained protests, this week announced an end to COVID restrictions and seemed to echo the message of the protesters opposed to pandemic mandates, saying of capacity limits: ‘Let’s just start moving on, cautiously. The world’s done with it, let’s just move forward.’
But in a crackdown on the protests, an Ontario Provincial Police officer knocked on the very door of Nadine Ellis-Maffei’s farmhouse last week to hand her a card and a pamphlet after seeing her post her post to the Freedom Convoy’s Facebook group, video of the incident shows.
Ellis-Maffei said in the post that she was considering attending the proptest in Ottawa. She said she had not been part of any demonstrations at this point.
‘Because of the protests happening province wide, yes we have been monitoring the protest. So there’s a protest coming up, I’m simply providing information about a peaceful protest,’ the officer said in the video taken last Thursday by Ellis-Maffei.
‘I was flabbergasted,’ the mother of three, who operates a farm in Ontario’s Peterborough County, told the Toronto Sun. ‘I still can’t believe it.’
Ellis-Maffei compared the incident to the ‘thought police and Big Brother’ from the dystopian novel 1984.
