Jordan
As the protest slash occupation in Ottawa enters its third week, it’s now Canada’s federal government that’s promising to take control of the situation.
News Clip 1
The federal government is invoked the emergencies act to supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades and occupations,
Jordan
If there’s been one constant through this, it’s been that each level of government somehow seems shocked that this hasn’t petered out yet. That these people haven’t run out of money and gone home. Of course, they haven’t run out of money, you might think, have you seen how many millions they have raised through crowdfunding? Yes, they have. But barely any of that money has been released. And much of what was initially released was frozen by a bank. And still every day brings new signs that organizers are flush with cash, fuel and food, of course, but also saunas, big video screens, a stage even hot tubs. This is an extremely well-funded protest.
The government seems to understand this too, which is why they announced yesterday that they will be using the powers that come with invoking the emergencies act to stop banks from providing services to those suspected of involvement in the blockades. That gives them power to immediately freeze all those accounts, not just ones receiving money from crowdfunding sources. But from any large suspect transaction. Even those involved in cryptocurrency, a method that organizers of the protests had previously touted.
News Clip 2
This is about following the money. This is about stopping the financing of these illegal blockades.
Jordan
It remains to be seen how that will work. But one thing we still don’t know is where is the money coming from? Who is donating it? And how has it been getting into the hands of the folks renting the hot tubs and paying for hotel rooms? And what does the fact that it has come to this say about the future of protest funding in this country and about foreign influence in Canada’s democracy? I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Jessica Davis is the President and Principal Consultant at Insight Threat Intelligence, a global security consulting company. She is as they say, following the money. Hi, Jessica.
Jessica Davis
Hi
Jordan
Can you first tell me about how this whole fundraising began with the original GoFundMe who started it? How did it do all that stuff?
Jessica Davis
Yeah, the original GoFundMe was started by the convoy organizers as we know them today. So to Merrill Lynch was central in that process. And it started off as a fairly, you know, small grassroots crowdfunding campaign. But it quickly got national attention here in Canada. And then, over the course of a couple of weeks ended up getting pretty significant international attention to such that it was raising about a million dollars, a million US dollars a day, up until the point in time in which it was frozen. So there’s a whole there’s a whole piece around that. That’s really interesting. But overall, I think it ended up raising 10 million US dollars, and only about a million of that was disbursed.
Jordan
How does that compare to a typical, relatively viral I guess, for lack of a better term crowdfunding campaign in Canada.
Jessica Davis
The other crowdfunding campaign, that’s probably the most comparable was the Humboldt bus tragedy, that campaign raised about $15 million. But it was a really different campaign, obviously, because yeah, like it was a really different sort of charitable cause it was for the family and survivors of that bus crash. So this is really quite unprecedented in Canadian history. And even GoFundMe has come out and said that the campaign itself was quite unprecedented in terms of their own experience with crowdfunding. And obviously, they’re the experts on that.
Jordan
We’ll talk about it being frozen in just a second. But first, what do we know about who was donating to that? And and did it start to change after as you put it, you know, they got international attention on this.
Jessica Davis
It’s really difficult for us to figure out exactly who was donating because there’s no identity verification that’s happening that happens on the public face of the GoFundMe website. So people could and did say anything about who they were and were donating. So for example, a couple of prominent individuals were identified as having donated but it turns out that at the end of the day, they hadn’t actually donated money. I think one of them was the Prime Minister’s wife and another one was a prominent Canadian epidemiologist, you know, people that really weren’t supporting the convoy.
The other piece of it, though, is some people were using their real names, and were then posting to social media saying that they had donated. And then, in some cases, some reporters had gotten in touch with people who they believe that donated that, and they confirmed it that way. So we do know that some of those donations were real, were verified, and that there were a number of people who had donated over the course of the campaign’s existence, though, we did start to see people posting that they were donating from outside of Canada. So from Austria, from Australia, from the United States, again, difficult to verify that this is actually where they were, you know, because people can say kind of anything they want on on on the platform. But it started to raise that concern about the potential for foreign donations to a Canadian political movement.
Jordan
This is all so opaque, it must make it incredibly difficult to really follow the money. But I guess what I’d like to know is you mentioned $1 million was sent out by GoFundMe. Is there any tracking on that money? Do we have any idea who got it, what they then did with it was it really disbursed to truckers in Ottawa on the ground.
Jessica Davis
So I think there’s a few different things there. So there’s what we know what we can know in terms of like public information, and then what our security and law enforcement services know. So the first piece of it, like once the money goes to go fund your crowdfunding website, we have we, as members of the public have very little visibility on that it really becomes a matter between the payment processor. So in this case, Stripe or PayPal, and the beneficiary of the money. So the people who organize the fundraiser, financial transactions in Canada are obviously very private, they’re not open, you can’t just access that information. So we don’t tend we have very little visibility on that. We’ve subsequently learned though, that TD Bank actually froze that money, including some money that seems to have come from individual donations directly to the organizers. So very likely email money transfers, or potentially direct wire transfers into their accounts. So TD Bank, probably the one or more of the organizers, banks, they froze that money, and have now asked the courts to take possession of it, because they don’t want to be holding these these frozen assets ie seized assets. So that’s what we kind of know, from a public perspective, but from a law enforcement security perspective, you know, with the right authorizations like if there’s a law enforcement investigation, and they’re able to get a warrant, all of the donor details are technically available to them with those authorizations. So it’s not the case that we could never know, it’s just the case of a matter of having those right authorizations in place and a law enforcement investigation, essentially.
Jordan
And what about the rest of the money? You mentioned that GoFundMe had stopped the fundraiser, what happens to that money that they got but never distributed?
Jessica Davis
So the funds that go fund me received so basically, like, we can think about them, almost like pledges, they were returned to the donors, there was initially some talk about for anybody who didn’t request a donation, go fund me holding the funds and then sending them to a charity. But I think, based on a lot of feedback from both the donors and from other concerned members of the public, myself included, they decided to just issue refunds to everyone involved, which I think is the right way to go, you know, how do we determine what a good charity is here and like, you know, their new start getting into charity law in Canada. And anyway, it gets very complicated very quickly. So that’s what happened to those funds.
But the piece of it that I think is quite interesting is that while the GoFundMe and the crowdfunding campaigns, because there’s been more than one, our what we see and what we talk about a lot, that’s not necessarily what’s funding the actual occupation in Ottawa.
Jordan
How so?
Jessica Davis
Yeah, that money we have much less visibility on. Because we know that the funds haven’t really been dispersed. We know that the GoFundMe funds were never really dispersed, and they were subsequently frozen. We have to then infer that the organizers are getting money from elsewhere, because there’s so much logistical support happening, you know, they’re paying for hotel rooms or paying for food. They’ve established, basically camps with hot tub, hot tub, hot tubs, and saunas, and all of this kind of stuff. So money’s coming from somewhere. Some of that is almost certainly coming through direct email money transfers that I mentioned earlier. I’ve identified a number of email addresses that they’re using for that. Unfortunately, we can’t always confirm what account is going to it depends on whether or not the individual has auto-deposit setup, and whether you get their name or not. Yeah, there’s a little trick here, right? Yeah. And then I think there’s a there’s probably a fair bit of cash floating around. We’ve seen disbursements from some of the convoy organizers to participants in cash, I think we saw Pat King handing out $50 bills, but there’s probably also cash donations happening and we have seen calls for cash. And then there are things like the bitcoin and cryptocurrency fundraisers, which are also raising a lot of money for the convoy.
Jordan
Let’s finish up the crowdfunding piece then before we talk about crypto and then the bigger picture of what this means for the protest movements. So after GoFundMe refunded the money, the new fundraiser was on a site called give send go, why did they choose that site? And what do we know about it?
Jessica Davis
Give send go is infamous in the crowdfunding world for having a much more libertarian, I could say approach to crowdfunding, they are very anti-government intervention in their affairs, they have hosted a number of very controversial fundraisers, one of their fundraisers was actually implicated in facilitating and a very notorious individual to attend the January 6, Riot or insurrection to Capitol Hill United States and a number of them have been involved in crowdfunding for legal defense for that kind of activity, you know, etc. There’s a long list of things that a lot of other companies and a lot of other crowdfunding companies have decided where they were they were too risk averse to take on, those crowdfunding campaigns have landed with GoFundMe, or give send go rather.
Jordan
And what’s the protest fundraiser at now on Gibson go?
Jessica Davis
There’s a couple of them. And the last time I checked, they were probably around $10 million US dollars all together. But the Gibson go piece is also very interesting, because there’s been a restraining order placed on those funds by basically like there’s a law enforcement investigation ongoing about mischief being being conducted in terms of the occupation and the protests and the blockades. And so part of that investigation is a restraint of funds, because those funds according to the affidavit are being used to further this criminal activity. So that restraint order is in place Give send go has subsequently said that it won’t be observing it. Now this is interesting, because give said Go is actually probably not an in a position to implement the restraint order, that’s really the purview of the payment processors, because like, Go Fund Me, give said Go isn’t actually processing the financial transactions. They’re just sort of that front face. It’s the backend, the PayPal, the stripe, the We pays, they’re the ones who actually process crowdfunding transactions. So they’re the ones who are implementing, or responsible for implementing the majority of this restraint order.
Jordan
The last thing I will ask you about give SENCO in particular is, we’re speaking on Monday morning, on Sunday night, their site was hacked. In relation to this specific fundraiser, what happened? And you know, from your point of view, we’ve been talking about gathering intelligence as a member of the public, what did you get from that?
Jessica Davis
Yeah, I was, I was asleep when this happened. So I woke up to this news this morning. And about 10 people had emailed me the data, which is great. So I’ve had a chance to look at it. So what happened was, it seems like something was poorly configured on giftset. goes, website, people got access to initially it was the data about people who set up the crowdfunding campaigns. And then last night, it was the donors for the big crowdfunding campaign. While this is super interesting. And this is something that really does fit into that intelligence picture. There’s a ton of caveats around it. So you know, first of all, there’s we have to validate that this is, in fact, data from give send go, it looks like it, it looks reliable, but you have to do some due diligence around that.
And then you have to make sure that you have to understand how the data was actually structured on give send, go’s servers, and then our databases to understand sort of like what data problems you might be looking at. So already there have been issues identified with the IP addresses. I know from looking at a lot of financial data in my time that the country codes are often incorrect. So that would have to be pretty much manually validated in order to get a really reliable picture of where people are sending the money from. Fake names still appear to be used there, although the email addresses look a bit more reliable. So there’s a ton of different data that you have to validate. And then before you can even really start to analyze it in a meaningful way. But this does present the possibility of some very detailed information about the donors to this campaign. But again, I’ll also emphasize where fairly sure at this point, this is not money that has been disbursed. This is still money that’s being held by give send go’s, payment processors. So the actual funding of the occupation, and the blockades is coming from elsewhere.
Jordan
And is that where Bitcoin comes into this? There was a big push towards Bitcoin from the protesters, or at least from the organizers out there. I’m going to use the term press conference pretty loosely. But you know, at their announcement, I guess last week,
Jessica Davis
yeah, this is one of the places where I think they’re getting some of their money from again, it’s pretty difficult to say, and I haven’t had a chance to do like the big crypto deep dive that I really want to do to sort of look at those disbursements and what wallets they’re going to in this kind of thing, but But how would it work? Yeah, so basically, people could donate money either through some of the main fundraisers that have payment options available to them. So basically, you could almost use your credit card or your debit account to do that. Or people could purchase cryptocurrency ahead of time, and then send it directly to one of the organizers, cryptocurrency wallets.
So there’s a number of different ways that this can happen. Some of them have more touch points with our regulated financial system than others do. So if you’re doing for instance, direct wallet to Wallet transactions, there’s less touch points with regulation than there are if you’re going through, for instance, a cryptocurrency exchange to then donate the funds that way, then there’s the issue of having to withdraw the funds or basically change the crypto into something that’s much more usable day to day in Ottawa to fund the realities of the protest. But this isn’t actually all that difficult. There are cryptocurrency ATMs in Ottawa I used when the other day, you can just go to them, use your user locally hosted wallet and essentially withdraw Canadian dollars. That’s one of the easiest ways to get physical cash. You can also transfer cryptocurrency to your bank account using cryptocurrency exchanges. So there’s a number of different ways it does require some technical expertise. But it’s totally possible and is harder to issue restraining orders on but I would also caution not impossible, we have a track record in Canada of police being able to seize cryptocurrency. So that remains a possibility.
Jordan
In terms of the bigger picture here. And in terms of I guess, threat intelligence, specifically, what does it mean that there are, you know, $10 million sitting there untouched. And as you point out, the organizers still seem pretty well funded, there’s a, there’s a story that that tells, and I’m not sure how to interpret it.
Jessica Davis
I think the biggest piece here is that there is plenty of financial support whatever way you want to look at it for the convoy, it could mean that have a lot of grassroots support. So lots of people donating small amounts, it could also mean that there is a number of really big deep pocket fundraise funders who are keen to fund this protest movement, potentially for a number of different reasons like sowing discord in Canadian society to artificially amplify this kind of movement. There’s also the possibility that the funding is being amplified by foreign actors, although we have very little, there’s no evidence to support that at this point in time, but it is the kind of thing that we have seen in the past. So there’s a number of sort of threat implications from this. But I think right now that the key ones that we need to focus on is the number of people who are funding the protest movement, particularly from outside of Canada and whether or not we consider that to be a thing that we want to have happen in this country.
Jordan
Do we have any real idea of what percentage of people donating money to this or outside of Canada, I’ve seen this be a huge point of contention between people who claim, you know, this is this is an offspring of the American far right, and other people who claim no look at it, it’s funded by grassroots Canadians.
Jessica Davis
We don’t have a good sense of how much money is being is coming in from outside of Canada, percentage wise, amount wise, etc. But to be honest, it kind of doesn’t matter. Any amount of foreign donations to political activity, I think is foreign influence on our domestic activities. And I think that’s of concern. So it could be a few $1,000. If it’s a few, if it’s 10s, of 1000s of dollars, hundreds of 1000s of dollars. All of that is a concern to me. Obviously, this is the kind of situation that seems to be magnifying some of those concerns just because of the amount of money that’s involved and the level of disruption that this is causing. But fundamentally, regardless of almost regardless of the amount of money that we’re talking about, the implications are the same.
Jordan
Which are?
Jessica Davis
That there’s foreign support and foreign interest. In domestic Canadian politics, and I think this is a this is one of those questions that we as Canadians need to ask ourselves if we’re okay with this, do we want to have foreign individuals, entities states, whatever, influencing domestic Canadian politics to this extent, or to any extent, really,
Jordan
What does an influx of cash like this, no matter where it’s coming from, do for not just, you know, the specific day-to-day realities of you know, they got to pay for hotel rooms. And you know, as you mentioned, hot tubs and all that stuff on the ground, but, but for the possibility of this being a movement that grows bigger and continues on, we’ve already seen other blockades at border crossings, like it’s got to put some huge momentum behind that.
Jessica Davis
I would agree that it’s a big momentum builder. I think the crowdfunding campaigns, while they haven’t been the source of funds have been a huge galvanizing influence on the protest movement in the campaigners themselves, but longer term, my real concerns with it lie more in the establishment of the non-profit organization and the potential disbursement of millions of dollars into that. So back about a week ago, maybe two weeks ago, the organizers of the protests actually established under Canadian law, a corporation, a not for profit entity that is intended to be the beneficiary of the give send go money. What this would do is that it would allow the organizers to channel 10s of millions of dollars if that money were to be released to illegal legal challenges, to challenge Canadian laws to provide legal defense for the people who are involved in the protest, and basically to fight the rule of law in Canada, to their benefit. And it will allow them to sustain this movement, probably indefinitely, regardless of whether or not it actually represents the majority of Canadians, which we know that it doesn’t, and whether or not is actually good for democracy.
Jordan
And in terms of the bigger picture on where the money is coming from. I think most people associate crowdfunding with, you know, you mentioned the humbled fund. That’s a good example of it, but also individuals raising money for their own medical issues or care for their pets or whatever they can’t make themselves. This has, I think, opened people’s eyes to a different side of it, and and what is that side of it? What kinds of activity does crowdfunding provide for? And is it even possible to watch all of it, it’s fine when the world’s attention is focused on like one or two of these, but I’m assuming there’s got to be dozens, if not hundreds of lower-level opportunities for these guys to raise money this way?
Jessica Davis
Yeah, the, the crowdfunding piece is one that I think is of concern and needs to be sort of monitored on an ongoing basis. But I also think that it’s important to emphasize that the vast majority of crowdfunding campaigns are for the legitimate, but I would describe as charitable purposes. So like you said, you know, raising money for pets that need medical care for you know, in the United States, it’s very common to raise money for your own health care, all kinds of things that, you know, have a real, legitimate charitable purpose total, I think where we need to have a bit more concern is when we’re talking about things that have a political purpose. So this is a great example.
There are also other concerns around crowdfunding sites, but they’re pretty minimal in terms of other criminal activity. So it’s not uncommon to see people establishing crowdfunding campaigns that are essentially fraudulent in nature. So just trying to make a quick, quick dollar and, and raise money that way. There are also some examples of terrorists and other illicit actors using crowdfunding campaigns, some platforms, but largely, you know, just more solicitation of funds to try to fund their activities. But this is a very, very small percentage of the activity that we see on crowdfunding sites. So, you know, for me, the concern really lies more around the funding of political activity this way.
Jordan
Last question, as you did this work, and as you started digging into the GoFundMe, but also everything else. What surprised you the most that you weren’t expecting to figure out when you began?
Jessica Davis
I wouldn’t say that anything really surprised me in terms of the fundraising and the financing of the protests in convoy, but I think there are still really significant gaps in terms of our knowledge of how some of that operational financing is happening that on the ground fundraising, so we see little glimpses of it from social media posts from telegram chats, and all of this kind of stuff. But the extent of it, I think, has yet to be fully uncovered. And I think that we have yet to really understand structures around some of the finance finances for the convoy so you know, it’s pretty common for movements and groups to establish Finance Committees and people who are responsible for that. So I think that there’s still a lot for us to uncover there. And I guess the one thing that I would say that surprised me is how this was initially presented as a bit more of a grassroots or unstructured protest movement, and then how quickly structures were established around it. It’s, it seems a little bit inorganic.
Jordan
it will be fascinating to see what we learn. I was gonna say, as this wraps up, I’ll say as this hopefully wraps up in the next few weeks, maybe,
Jessica Davis
Yeah
Jordan
Jessica thank you so much for joining us today.
Jessica Davis
Thank you so much. It was a great chat.
Jordan
Jessica Davis of Insight Threat Intelligence. That was the big story. For more from us, you can head to thebigstorypodcast.ca You know where it is by now. You can also follow us if you don’t already on Twitter, @TheBigStoryFPN . And you can reach us by email, click here! You can find the big story and every single podcast player and you can hear it on your smart speaker by asking it to play the big story podcast. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow
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