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Surrey, White Rock residents donated $30,000 to illegal convoy blockades, hacked data reveals

Largest donation was $2,500
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A group of people against vaccine mandates met at the Pacific Highway Border Crossing in South Surrey Tuesday to show support to truckers last week. (Aaron Hinks photo)

Nearly 300 people from White Rock and Surrey have donated $30,000 to the convoy protests and illegal blockades through the crowdfunding website GiveSendGo, an analysis of hacked data from the website reveals.

Earlier this week, crowdfunding website GiveSendGo was hacked after it gained widespread use in collecting funds for truckers blocking downtown Ottawa and Canada/U.S. borders across the country, including Pacific Highway border crossing in South Surrey.

RELATED: Trudeau invokes Emergencies Act as ‘illegal blockades’ drag on

The person or persons who illegally hacked the website posted the data of people that donated to the trucker convoy cause. The data included email addresses, names, postal codes, IP addresses, personalized messages to the truckers and amounts donated. No credit card information was leaked and no money was stolen, the GiveSendGo site confirmed. After the hack, GiveSendGo said its security team immediately shut down the website to prevent further damage.

Truckers and their supporters turned to GiveSendGo after GoFundMe announced it would not forward money raised through its website to the truckers because the protests violated its rules on violence and harassment. More than 120,000 donors contributed about $10 million before the GoFundMe page was shut down and donors were reimbursed.

Before GiveSendGo’s website was hacked, more than 36,000 people who donated, or 36 per cent, were from Canada, while 56 per cent came from the U.S. Two per cent came from the United Kingdom and the remaining three per cent came from more than 100 other countries.

RELATED: Trucker convoy GoFundMe paused as it tops $10M raised for anti-vaccine mandate protest

There were more than 92,000 listed donations in total.

The data shows that Canadians donated the largest amount of money at $5.4 million (CAD), while residents in the U.S. donated $4.5 million.

By analyzing the postal codes attached to individual donations, Peace Arch News found that nearly 300 Surrey and White Rock residents donated at least $30,333 to the cause. That figure represents only residents that live in the V3R, V3S, V3T, V3W, V3V, V4A and V4B postal codes.

The largest donation, which was made from the V4B postal code, was $2,500. The donor, who PAN has decided to not name, wrote a message to truckers.

“GoFundMe would not take my $1,200 to support the Truckers Anti Mandate movement so I’m sending $2,500 via GiveSendGo. I am so tied of the Government fraud and manipulation of Covid for their own political gain. Time to take a stand and push back against tyranny. In Canada and abroad let’s band together and fight back with verifiable truth,” the message read.

People who made a donation were not obligated to provide their real name, email address or postal code. Some of the information could be fake or submitted under an alias.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday invoked the national Emergencies Act to bring to an end the anti-government blockades he describes as illegal and not about peaceful protest.

The government will use the act to force towing companies to remove big rigs and other vehicles that are blocking highways and other critical infrastructure, establish zones where public assembly is not allowed, and require banks to suspend or freeze accounts suspected of supporting the blockades, including those belonging to companies whose trucks are part of the convoy.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said the government is “serving notice” to trucking companies with vehicles involved in any of the blockades that they will have their corporate accounts frozen and lose their insurance.

- With files from the Canadian Press



About the Author: Aaron Hinks

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