A family in Manitoba, Canada, is out thousands of dollars after they unknowingly rented their recreational vehicle to a Freedom Convoy-style QAnon cult leader, who trashed, damaged and then abandoned it over 161 km from the couple’s home. And you thought putting your car on Turo was risky.
The LeBlancs occasionally rent out their RV when they’re not using it to make a little extra cash on the side. In September, someone reached out to the family to rent the vehicle and they agreed, not knowing they were renting to a representative of Romana Didulo, the self-proclaimed Qanon Queen of Canada. From Vice:
“Honestly, if we knew who we were renting to,” Vicki LeBlanc told VICE News with a quiet laugh. “We never would have done it.”
After clashing with the conspiracy figure, who posted their contact information for all her thousands of followers, the LeBlancs finally got their RV back, but it’s not in good shape and may cost the family thousands to fix.
Didulo claims she was installed as the supreme ruler of Canada with the title Queen via “white hats” in the U.S. government. Didulo, an unemployed 60-something immigrant to Canada from the Philippines, uses a heady mix of new-age theosophical ideas, Qanon bullshit and sovereign citizen rhetoric to convince followers her edicts will allowed them to stop paying their bills and, of course, send money to her instead. She threaten arrests and executions for any official or utilities supplyers that dare question her bizarre edicts. She used Canada’s Freedom Convoy as a model for moving her most die-hard social media followers into a convoy of their own, though they only ever reached a few RVs at a time. Once at the Ottawa protest, she and her followers clashed with the hyper patriotic truckers after her group burned a Canadian flag. Over the summer, her followers attempted to make a citizen’s arrest of police officers in Peterborough, Ontario. That went about as well as you might expect.
While police and the Canadian feds eventually dismantled the Freedom Convoy, Didulo and her follows trek across Canada to this day. Didulo has made very public pleas for cash donations to fix, maintain or outright buy RVs to keep her 10 or so “staff members” on the move across Canada. The RVs have been at the centre of some of the cult’s most dramatic moments, with earlier members being accused of theft, hijacking or disabling the vehicles when they fell out of favour with their queen. Those who stray from the true belief or are unable to put up with their regent’s BS anymore are summarily kicked out of the RVs. The RVs have been the setting for some of the worst cult-like tortures, such as playing the disco hit “Rasputin” by Boney M over and over for hours.
The LeBlancs watched all of this on Didulo’s very active Telegram channel. Eventually, the family demanded the return of their vehicle and threatened to report it stolen if it wasn’t returned by Didulo and her followers. Eventually, the RV was dumped at a gas station 193 km from the couple’s home. They told Vice what they found when they retrieved their RV:
First of all, the RV wasn’t sitting square to the ground, meaning that something had likely gone wrong in the suspension. Then the couple realised in the sparse message they received from the Queen’s team, they were never told where the keys were left and looked forever to find them and had to use a spare set (they would find the keys later taped underneath the RV after they returned home.)
“They just left it in a mess. They didn’t bother to clean out their food or the garbage or some of their supplies,” Leblanc said. “The slide is completely damaged. It can’t be opened or closed. There are issues with suspension.”
“Inside there was like food everywhere. I think there was a sleeping bag they left behind. They left their sardines, naturally.”
Not only did the cult trash trash their vehicle, causing thousands of dollars in damage, they also travelled double the miles they were contracted to use. Didulo is still raising money on her Telegram, but the LeBlancs have no illusions of ever seeing a dime.
“I see on the weekend, she raised thousands to pay for her RV that she is riding in, LeBlanc told Vice. “Maybe she could share the wealth and pay for some of the damages for everybody else’s RV.”