Citigroup worker placed on paid leave after being revealed as operator behind a QAnon website
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Citygroup has said it has put an employee on paid leave after it was discovered he was the operator behind a popular website linked to the conspiracy theory QAnon, which was earning £3,000 a month in crowd funding.
Jason Gelinas – a 48-year-old resident of Berkeley Heights, New Jersey – was revealed last week to be the person operating the website QMap, which collected and organised posts made by QAnon’s mysterious founder and leader, known as Q.
Gelinas is a senior vice president in the technology group at Citigroup, according to the Bloomberg who found his now-defunct LinkedIn account.
The domain Qmap.pub – which received over 10 million visitors in July – was quickly shut down after fact checking website logically.ai identified Gelinas last week.
It was one of the most popular aggregate archives of the QAnon conspiracy’s figurehead, who many of its followers believe to be a member of the Trump administration.
The QAnon conspiracy theory claims Trump is waging a secret war against a ‘deep state’ shadowy cabal of Democratic pedophiles.
Citigroup (pictured, file photo) has placed one of its employees on paid leave after it was discovered he was behind a popular QAnon website called QMap, which collects posts made online by the conspiracy theory’s anonymous leader
Citigroup said that Gelinas was put on paid leave pending an internal investigation for violating Megabank’s guidelines for employees.
Bloomberg News reported that Gelinas – under the name ‘QAppAnon’ – was earning over $3,000 a month from his followers through crowdfunding website Patreon to cover the operating costs.
The news outlet also found that in March, QAppAnon announced via Patreon an upcoming app called ‘Armor of God’, a social network for QAnon followers.
The QAnon conspiracy theory claims Trump is waging a secret war against a ‘deep state’ shadowy cabal of Democratic pedophiles. Jason Gelinas – a 48-year-old resident of Berkeley Heights, New Jersey – was revealed last week to be the person operating the website QMap. Pictured: A supporter of president Trump waves a flag with a reference to QAnon
The app’s Google Play Store profile describes itself as being ‘designed for patriots worldwide to create and share content including prayers, news, memes and posts.’
In a statement on Thursday, Citi said: ‘As outlined in our Code of Conduct, employees are required to disclose and obtain approvals for outside business activities.’
In its investigation, Logically also learned that Gelinas was a Wall Street IT expert who joined Citigroup in 2003 after a spell at Credit Suisse.
The number of followers of QAnon has been growing. The website QMap received 10 million views in July alone. Pictured: An attendee wears a QAnon shirt before a campaign rally for U.S. President Donald Trump in North Carolina, September 8
Gelinas, who appears to be a major figure among the conspiracy theory’s followers, was reached by Bloomberg News outside his home last week.
‘I’m not going to comment on any of that,’ he said when asked if he was behind the website. ‘I’m not going to get involved. I want to stay out of it.’ He did, however, call QAnon a ‘patriotic movement to save the country.’
Last week, the bank’s CEO was hastened into an early retirement after it was revealed that federal regulators are preparing a formal reprimand for the company for failing to upgrade the bank’s outdated security technology systems.
Michael Corbat, who will leave in February 2021, will be replaced by Jane Fraser, becoming the first woman to hold the CEO role at a top-four U.S. bank.
The New York post speculated that Gelinas’s senior role could mean he played a part in Corbat’s exit, but a source told the outlet that the outgoing CEO’s resignation and Gelinas’s situation ‘have nothing to do with each other.’
The QAnon narrative has grown to include other long-standing conspiracy theories, gaining traction among some extreme Trump supporters.
The movement is often likened to a right-wing cult. Some followers have run for office, primarily in the Republican Party, though some have been independent or run as third-party candidates.
The president has refused to condemn QAnon, recently telling reporters that the conspiracy theory is ‘gaining in popularity’ and that its supporters ‘like me very much.’
Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence told CBS last month, ‘I don’t know anything about QAnon, and I dismiss it out of hand.’
WHAT IS QANON?
Origins: Q Anon started on fringe website 4chan, where a poster calling themselves Q left messages claiming to be a senior federal official and purporting to reveal a ‘deep state’ cabal intent on bringing down Donald Trump. Q grew out of the discredited Pizzagate conspiracy that top Democrats were involved in pedophilia and cannibalism from the basement of a Washington D.C. restaurant, but quickly picked up steam with ‘Q’ leaving ‘clues’ and claims that Trump was going to bring down the deep state. Whenever the conspiracies turn out to not be true, followers rationalize that the inaccuracies are part of Q’s larger plan.
Who is Q?: There may now be multiple people posing as Q on the anonymous 4chan boards
A QAnon believer blocked the bridge near Hoover Dam with a homemade armored tank in the name of the movement, and later pleaded guilty to terrorism
Hoover Dam: In June 2019, 32-year-old Matthew Wright, a QAnon supporter, blocked the bridge near Hoover Dam in Arizona with a homemade armored vehicle in a 90-minute stand-off. He pleaded guilty to terrorism charges and has written two letters to Donald Trump from jail, which include the sign-off, which has become the QAnon motto: “For where we go one, we go all.”
Michael Flynn: Trump’s former national security adviser became a martyr figure for QAnon believers after he took a plea deal from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, admitting he lied about his Russia contacts. QAnon conspiracy have spun Flynn pleading guilty into him being a persecuted victim of the deep state – and some even claim he is ‘Q.’
Many believers put three star emojis next to their Twitter handles. But the retired three-star general has denounced any connections to the group and pulled out of participating in an event after finding out it was hosted by a QAnon believer.
QAnon believers make former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn out to be a martyr after taking a plea deal with Robert Mueller
QAnon Political Candidates: Jo Rae Perkins, 64, won the Republican primary in Oregon in May to run for a Senate seat against incumbent Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley. “I stand with Q and the team,” she said when asked about her interest in the group. She insisted she goes to QAnon message boards as a “source of information” and claims media focuses too much on the group. Perkins won 49 per cent of the vote against three other Republicans.
Marjorie Taylor Greene came in first place in the Republican primary in a deep-red Georgia district, and will enter an August runoff. She has admitted to believing in several QAnon conspiracy theories.
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