Behind the Bastards - Part Three: Romana Didulo: Queen of Canada

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

Robert concludes the story of Romana Didulo, for now, with the tale of her ill-fated invasion of a small Canadian town.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Also Media. Welcome back to the podcast that this is part three of our episodes on Queen Romana Digilo of Canada. And, you know, Canadians, thank you for letting us talk about your monarch, you know, your leader that I know you all love and respect. And I hope that we're being, you know, positively deferential towards your great ruler, you know. It's, I'm sorry. It's just so sad that Canada has to deal with having this crazy person run their country. You know, can you imagine what would you like having like a crazy asshole in charge of your country? Just embarrassing.

What is that like? Thank God. Just a delusional. Jesus. I know. Sheesh. It's okay, guys. You'll get your shit together one of these days, like we have in the Americas.

Like us. I guess you're in the Americas too. Whatever. And you too can buy Greenland. All right. Right. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the last couple years, didn't we learn that the folding chair was invented by black people because of what happened in Alabama? This Black History Month, the podcast, Selective Ignorance with Mandy B, unpacked black history and culture

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I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. And immediately, the mask came off. You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband. That's your husband. spend. Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. At a Morehouse college, the students make their move.

These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the board of trustees, including Martin Luther King's senior. It's the true story of protests and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget. Hans Charles. Our menelick Lamomber. Listen to the A building on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So August 2021 to December of 2021, we're very busy times for the Queen of Canada.

She hits like, you know, like her peak, at least this is when Christine Sarteshi says she hits her peak number of followers, which is like 70 something thousand on telegram. Now, at this point in time, because inflation's a problem. and because the economy's not doing great and because her followers haven't been paying their bills, she's focused a lot on like the fine, on providing like what look like lifelines to the finances of her people. Okay.

She's got like these grocery pages that are supposed to like help her followers, like purchased groceries, find groceries that they can like afford and stuff. She's issuing like decrees, eliminating taxes and credit card debt. And she's issuing like fake money. And it's unclear how this is supposed to work.

It's like a promissory note that you can print out from a downloadable template with, like, instructions that says you can use this money wherever you are. They're payable by the Kingdom of Canada. She also describes this as working basically the same as, like, money at the Canadian Tire Company, which, like, is this company that, like, sells, I think, mostly used tires. And they have their own, like, fake company currency, right? that like you can use for stuff within, if you're paying for other products, you can like accumulate it. A lot of businesses do this. And that's kind of, which makes it very unclear, how is this supposed to work?

Who is supposed to accept this, right? Like what is the, and that's actually never made clear to me. These, these promissory notes, I'll pull one up for, I'll do a screenshare so you can, you can see what these fucking things look like. Real groceries with made up money? Yeah, I think that's the idea. is like they're supposed to find... Oh, it looks like a check.

Yeah, it looks kind of like a check. It's a promissory note. You get to write your own number in, so it's a blank check for all of your followers. I don't know, it's really unclear to me how even her followers were supposed to believe this stuff worked. But obviously, like, it doesn't.

Of course not. But you do have people, like, printing these out and she issues them when she's, as they're driving around, they're stopping in towns. And they're meeting up with, like, whatever followers they have in these individual towns, and she's handing these out to people, you know?

So I think some of them just believe, like, eventually when this is valued, I'll finally be rich, you know? That's part of the whole big idea that, like, there's a change coming and it's going to completely alter my financial situation. And that makes you kind of want to have to believe her. Yeah. Yeah.

She continues making decrees. This is, like, the primary way that she interacts with her followers. And as Sarteshi writes, the Kingdom of Canada was guided by three basic laws. Quote, number one, if you kill you will be killed. Number two, if you kill and mass commit genocide crimes against humanity, we will take out your family and your DNA strain. What? We'll go back to that in a second.

Three, war and division are unlawful. So, if you commit crimes, we're going to kill your family and your DNA strain. War and division are unlawful. What? I thought you was telling us to kill the doctors. Yes. Yeah, you got to kill the doctors, but you can't divide people, prop. But you can't divide.

That's unlawful. That's unlawful. No dividing people. Kill all the doctors and the nurses and the school teachers and the business. But don't divide people. You know, don't cut off your DNA strand. Again, I feel like that's got to be a translation issue because I'm like, I don't think, do you, you might actually mean that because you're an alien. Yeah.

She does describe her office, the royal office of Queen Romana, to be the highest court in the land, thus all Canadian lawyers are now defunct because they have, they're members of the British accreditation registry, as opposed to, you know, the real judicial system that she, I guess, hasn't gotten around to building yet, you know? Commit to the bit, homie. Yeah. So in January of 2022, Romana's like tour of Canada really takes off in a big way. She's got about a dozen followers.

She's got a group of RVs. And they start traveling, you know, initially into like downtown Ottawa. But after that point, they just kind of continue going, right? Like she's meeting people at various small towns. She's expanding her conception of like what's, you know, my powers are. She's making declarations as to martial law. And they're just kind of like driving constantly. She's taking it.

She's taken in six figures at this point, well over $140,000 in donations. It's unclear exactly how. many. But that's what's got to pay for everything because their RVs are not cheap to drive, right? And she's got to continue like paying for that. She's got to pay for uniforms for her people, as we'll talk about. Like there's a lot of, there's a lot of expenses due to this. So who's, who's donating? She's got like 70,000 people on telegram. So some of them are sending her money, you know? And it only takes a few. And she's also got a couple of her followers that are in-person followers, she's completely soaking.

Like, they're signing over everything to her, right? Like, she's doing that thing, too. Yeah. Now, as 2022 goes along, she's the road trip queen of Canada. She's issuing these declarations, but she starts to expand what she's offering her followers. Because, you know, grocery lists and fake money only goes so far. What people really want is magical powers. And in August of 2022, she announces that she has started.

teaching her followers, her powers to her followers. She gets on, basically she makes a video saying that, like, I've started teaching people, you know, given an intensive class and how people can think like me and act like commander in chief. So I'm teaching them all how to run a country, if that's ever necessary. I'm teaching them how to, like, take hostages and negotiate, which is not a great sign for your cult. Per Christine Starteschi. Didi, also said she's teaching her core followers had to cloak and un-cloke themselves and how to use high-level technologies, including 5G, that Digilo claims will allow her trainees to see through the walls of buildings and homes. She contends that all science fiction movies and television series are

disclosures, documentaries, and diaries. Both the television series Star Trek and the movie The Tomorrow War seemed to have had an unusually strong influence on Digilo. The Tomorrow War is her life storyline. A prop, have you ever seen The Tomorrow War? No. No one did. I have not. I know. I'm not sure someone in the audience to watch the fucking tomorrow war, but statistically, you didn't. I didn't. I have no idea what you're talking about.

No idea. Great, great. It's a 2021 sci-fi movie starring Chris Pratt in which soldiers from the future come back to the present day to warn humanity that in the future we're losing a war against alien invaders. And so they need to draft the whole present day military to go back to the future and fight them. And then when we run out a present day military, they just start drafting regular people to go to the future. I think I purposefully said, ain't a way in the world. I'm going to watch this.

Nah, no, that doesn't sound good. I was like, I ain't going to watch this. I know I'm bored, but I ain't going to watch this. You lost me at Chris Pratt. Chris Pratt? Yeah, you lost me at Chris Pratt. So it grossed about $20 million in theaters from a budget of $200 million or so. So it does not do well.

People are. The only one ain't watched this. Like the writer and director of this movie are dragged out into the street and shot in downtown Hollywood. It's such a failure. But Queen Romana loves this movie because she idolizes the queen alien, like the bad guy of the movie, I think. I haven't seen this fucking movie. But the aliens are called the White Spikes, and the queen of the white spikes is stronger than all of the males of her species. And Romana seems to really, really vibe with this.

He latched on to that. Okay. Sarteshi ties this movie to Romana's belief in something called DNAX, which she describes as God's tool that she plans to release to every living, all caps, I Am in the world. Go back to that weird little cult that we started this with. Dang, there is. I don't know what this means. As best as I can tell, I think, because the original I am movement was based on this guy, this fucking dude hundreds of years ago who'd claimed to be immortal. and all-knowing because of magic.

And the I-M movement was like, no, there's all these, it's actually like this divine, there's this set of tactics that you can find. It is still quasi occult. And she's taking basically those claims in saying, no, no, it's not the occult. You can have all of these powers by alien DNA technology that will make you live log and be all-knowing, right? I think that's the gist of it. It's a little unclear to me exactly what she believes because it's silly. Yeah.

But that's, because what the hell. Yeah. Right. Because what the hell? 2022 is spent largely on the road in a caravan of RVs, one of which was gifted to her, and several of which were rented. The exact makeup of her cold shifts rapidly at this point. For one thing, formerly loyal members don't last forever, right?

Like, people find this and think that it's a good idea, and then she starts to be a crazy asshole to them. And eventually they have enough, and they're like, this isn't fun anymore, and they bounced, right? Other people get, what? I need to water. turn on, okay? Right. I'm good. I'm tired of not having water.

Tired of not having heating. Yeah. So people will leave, but other people will come in. So there's kind of, and it's never large. The in-person following is never bigger than much bigger than like a dozen people. But there is some like people will leave, people will come in. That's sort of happening, right? She's also purging people for making mistakes periodically, which keeps the numbers down.

She has at this point, by the time 2020, two roles around her followers have uniforms. These are generally white button-up shirts with the Queen Romana logo emblazoned on them, often adorned with official medals that she awarded in her capacity as Canadian commander-in-chief, right? And these are... Because, like, the question whenever you've got one of these people handing out medals is like, okay, what kind of medals are these? Are you like, are these fake military medals?

Are these, like, bottle caps? Like, what are we looking at here? And as best as I can tell, I think that these are, at least from what I have read, and I think this is Mack Lamarrow who made this claim, and I'm sure he's right. These are like mostly Boy Scout medals. Like these are like Boy Scout awards. Love it. Love it. Change nothing.

It's good stuff. Yeah. Dude, how come nobody in this whole situation was like, can I meet a like a prince or like you ain't got no like accountant? Like this whole king. Like, I ain't never met nobody else in this kingdom. Yeah. Like, does anybody work for you? You're the only one who believes you're the queen.

And I guess the people who live in this RV and the handful of folks that we meet traveling, you know. Yeah, but none of them are a part of your court. Like, who? Yeah. Where's the rest of your administration? Right. Yeah. Where's the rest of this doesn't feel like a government.

Again, that gets down to the whole. I think there's a lot of, like, play acting. You know, it takes Q to tango with something like this. I do want to show you guys these uniforms because they're not as elaborate as they might sound from what I... It's mostly she's just got people wearing like white shirts with fucking medals and stuff on them. But yeah, like those and those are as soon as I saw the picture like, yeah, those do look like Boy Scout medals. That's not a uniform. Yeah, it's not a uniform and those are Boy Scout medals.

Yeah, they look like... They're just all dressed in white. They look a little seor. They look like a golf caddies. Yeah, they look like he's got his... He's got his all access pass on. And you can see behind him as an RV that has like meet and greet, her majesty, Queen Romana, yada, yada, yada, yada.

Like, this is how they drive around. Their RVs are also billboards. He's got his finger pointed up at the sky, which is a thing that all of her followers do. I think they took this from, because this is a thing in like the Muslim world. Like you'll see like, and it basically means that like, you know, God's in charge, right? Yeah, totally. Right? Like, that's the idea.

You're pointing at him. I don't know if that's what it means to her for her. followers to do that, but they are, that is the gesture they're doing. And I'm sure that's where it came from. She must have just seen it on TV or something and liked it. Dang, imagine being that guy. And then now you're like, that's on the internet forever. That's on the internet forever.

You in this uniform with like whatever fucking ID she made for you hanging around your neck and your Boy Scout Awards for being the best special boy in the cult. Whatever stage pass you have on. Like one day, that's a piece. Because the guy in this is pretty. young, he looks like he's in his 20s, maybe 30. Like, if he doesn't have kids, he very well might one day. And someday, they're going to find out, hey, dad, what is this?

Are you in a uniform? What are these awards? Is that, let's say the Queen of Canada's, Arfee? My goodness. Let me tell you a story about the time. Dad made a mistake. Queen Did Yulot was incredibly, is incredibly serious about her schedule. And one of the worst things you can do if you really want to get kicked out of this cult, the easiest way to do it is to cost her time because that is a capital offense.

Corey, one of her former inner circle members, lost his position after a series of minor errors, including booking an RV to be picked up at 5 p.m. instead of 4 p.m. The queen called this treason and threatened to have him executed. She'd done this numerous times before, and Mac Lamrow notes that the methods varied from, quote, being shot in the head or thrown from a helicopter. So she's saying, like, I'm going to have my men to shoot you in the head. I'm going to throw you out of a helicopter because you made me wait an hour to get in my new RV that you rented for me. It's ridiculous. I have royalty.

Yeah. I need to borrow this RV. Right. She justifies these punishments to the rest of our followers by saying, nobody controls my timeline. Anybody that screws up my timeline is going to be tried for treason and shot in the head. Except for the people that own the RV. Right. You know people that own the RV.

They control your time. They might have more control over your time. I'm lying here. But you know who won't have you tried for treason and shot in the head prop? They better not, but tell me about it. Sponsor this podcast, very rarely have people shot in the head, you know? I'm not going to say never. I'm not going to say never.

I might be doing an ad. They've definitely had some people shot in the head, you know? Yeah, but. Can you stop naming brands, please? Sophie Kibla knows they've had some people shot in the head. It's fine. We don't, we all keep drinking the soda. It's okay.

The soda can literally clean your car battery and we still drink it. Roy, please bleep the name of the brand. No, they don't know what it is. When Prop said it eats car batteries, they don't know what we're talking about. Now you have to keep the bit. Yeah. But still bleep it. Anyway, here's ads.

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It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated. And Black America was out of breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia at Martin's Alma, Mark, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history,

Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people would die. In 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to the A-building on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband, Mike, was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever. I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. and immediately the mask came off. You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband.

So keep this secret for so many years. He's like a seasoned pro. This is a story about the end of a marriage, but it's also the story of one woman who was done living in the dark. You're a dangerous person who prays on vulnerable, people. Your creditor might go up and good. Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And we're back. You're killing me. Yeah, baby. I'm killing everybody. Just like, I mean, you're doing numbers. We might want that sponsor money, though. They did invent the visual description of suss. So as I noted earlier, Corey and Daisy were found. foundational cult members. Romano wouldn't have gotten this crazy train off the ground without them, and this did not stop her from abusing them relentlessly. The people you are most reliant on are the

people you're going to be most shitty on if you're this kind of cult leader. Yeah, totally. And in fact, the fact that they were so useful and key may have encouraged her to abuse them. Maybe she felt kind of insecure that she needed them so much and she was really trying to like keep them beaten down. I don't actually know. But the two were doing a lot. They went from managing her telegram channels to becoming her bodyguard, mechanic, and secretary. Daisy was also the royal bank account, setting up fundraisers and taking donations on behalf of the queen. Didi lo made impossible demands regularly to these people.

And whenever money came up short or the built-in limitations of technology thwarted her whims of the moment, she would bully Daisy, who later said the abuse was nonstop. It was never ending. No proper meals, you know, no sleep. She continued, she didn't care. She said, if you work for the queen, you work. for the queen. You volunteered to be here. Why are you complaining? And like, she's kind of a bit of a point. She's got a little of a point. Yeah. You don't have to be here.

You knew what you were. You should have known what you were getting into with this, this dumb bullshit. Like, come on now. Like, you know what you were getting into. Um, yeah. Do we, do we have any idea how old this married couple, Daisy and I've forgotten the name of I'm guessing they were mature adults, probably in middle age. Maybe we'll pass it. A decent number of her, but they're not. Some of them are pretty young. I don't actually know their age range.

But, you know, they're old enough to know better. Yeah. And to rent an RV. Yeah. Sure. Wow. So during her months with the queen, Daisy estimates that she lost between 10 and 15 pounds. Mark Lamarrow, who interviewed a number of former followers,

describes the degree of control the queen exercised over the day. day-to-day lives of her immediate tribe as pretty extensive. People would have to ask her for permission to even shower, which she periodically denied some individuals for days at a time. Why are they like that? Why is that a thing? Remember the, remember the, it's pretty normal cult leader stuff. Yeah, I know.

That's what I'm saying. It's control over their bodies, over even like their ability to clean themselves. You're, you're practicing, you know? You're in such close quarters. Where are you showering? In the RV. Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. You're in such close quarters.

And your punishment is that everybody has to smell that person stink? Yeah, that's crazy. Well, she's not. The RV where the people stay is different from the Queens RV. True. Oh, I forgot. She got the Royal RV. Okay.

She sometimes had a separate RV just to use as a bathroom. This lady has figured something out. Uh-huh. Again, she is living well based on her previous life. She's doing really good. In relation to. Yeah, but that's weird body control about smell. I feel like I would.

want people to smell amazing in front of me. If I'm royal, if I'm royal, it's three showers a day. Y'all clean y'all's booties. It's just about exercise and control. If you can get them to do that, you can get them to do anything, you know? True. And Romana spends most, despite claiming that she's taking back Canada, she's the rightful ruler, all of her time has spent managing her followers, this very small number of in-person.

That's what she does. Her most of her work. It's like 20 of them, right? Right. And that's most of her work, is keeping these people busy, you know? Keep these people too busy and too beaten down to leave or to realize that, like, they're in, like, how fucked up the situation is. Part of how she does this is she hands up every morning the day starts with her gathering everyone together and issuing them their tasks for the day. And we're talking a mix of stuff like, we're all living in RVs. So there's waste tanks that have to be emptied.

There's water tanks. They have to be refilled. There's food that has to be purchased. But there's also bullshit work like, we need new signs for the vehicles. I need someone to print out a bunch of these fake money things to hand out at the next stop, right? And she's, the point of this is there's some stuff that has to get done. There's a lot of busy work. What's most important, though, is that she's keeping everyone busy all day. People would regularly work 16 hours at a time.

But she's keeping the busy doing mostly bullshit tasks or like petty work tasks that they don't get anything done. They're not, they came here to be part of this crusade to fix Canada, and all they're doing is like maintaining the caravan and handling bullshit work for her printing stuff out or making new signs or whatever. And so, and this is something former members will say is like, I felt like I worked all the time and nothing ever got done, right? Yeah, you're just running a, how colds. Running a kinko's just to. Basically. And you think about it, this isn't so unique to her. It's shabbier and sadder because this is.

just like 10 people or 12 people living in a series of RVs. But that's what Scientology is, right? That's the whole point. Just with money. Yeah. You have the C-org and you have all these people, these auditors doing, it's that you have petty work and tasks to keep the people who are full-time members of the cult constantly working, right?

That's true. You want them always using up their energy. Otherwise, they're going to put that energy towards maybe realizing that they're in a fucking cult, you know? Yeah. And DeDulow's goal was to make sure everyone's exhausted and working all the time so they don't have time to plot against her. One good example of this would be the account of a cult member who claims Romana made her wake up at 4 a.m.

to turn on her hotel coffee maker. She would do stuff like this, demand people do very basic tasks for her that shouldn't even be necessary just because it's her exercise. It's her exercise and control, right? Yeah, that's some bully gang stuff right there. Yeah. Life inside the cult on the road sounds like living hell to me. Here's one description of how Romana liked to say. start off their days, per an article in vice.

Quote, every morning at 6 or 7 a.m., the queen would play her favorite song. Disco supergroup Boney M. smash hit Rasputon about the well-endowed Russian mystic of the same name. Often, the funky vibes would last an hour. Once DeJulo played Rasputin for the entire duration of a 10-hour drive while her staff just sat and listened. Her followers even recorded their own version of the song with lyrics about her. And...

It's the worst anti ever. Yeah. Oh, man. It's like 10 hours of fucking Rasputin. And I love that song. It's a great. It's a great. It's a banger of a hit. Don't get me wrong.

Ten hours. But 10 hours of that. And her obsession with it is so weird. Like there's a, I'll pull up. There's a, like, you should actually hear her followers version of Rasputt. I need to. I was going to be my next request. So if you want to, if you listen in, check in to the Q&on anonymous episodes.

I think it's the second one about Romana that has with Mac Lamro that has the actual audio of the song. I don't want us to get copyright struck, and I'm kind of worried that we might, especially what with the Netflix thing going on. So I'm just going to actually sing you the lyrics. So you're going to get to listen to me sing as best as I can recall in tune to the original song Rasputin by Boni M. Okay, are we ready? Yes. Yes. There lives a fearless queen.

Romana did you low. She may seem quite small, but she's a. so so powerful. When communists amassed to subjugate her peeps, she summoned allied forces to obliterate. Queen Romana lives for we the people,

strong, benevolent and just. She's discreetly waking, sleeping people, daily building trust. Ra, ra, Romana, precious queen of Canada, she's taken names and she's kicking ass. Ra, ra, Romana, precious queen of

Canada. please hop on board or get off the bus. And there's a lot more to it. There's a fun line. She's liberating Earth with wisdom and with grace. But if her RV's rock and she is dancing late, that's weird. That's a weird line to stick in there. Kind of makes me wonder if there's some weird sex stuff going on.

I don't know. But yeah. Love it. It's great. Yeah. All of it. Again, don't change it. Yeah.

Beautiful stuff. Beautiful stuff. We all love to see people repurposing Boni M's work for the good of the world. Yes. So, as you might expect, hearing hours and hours of the song Rasputin played over and over again, even though that song's kind of a banger, might lead some people in the cult to wonder, like, well, as Corey put it, oh, my fucking Lord, what are we doing? What the hell?

Yes. She's yelling, we got a war people. Time to get up and dancing around like a lunatic. So this start does start to wear short on some people. The ridiculousness is kind of hard to continue. to stretch your sense of disbelief towards. One former member of the group told Vice that one day he took one of their RVs out to do errands. Like there were parts that they needed to pick up.

I think for like their streaming rig, they needed to get food for dinner. So there's stuff he needed to do, but he didn't get Queen Romana's permission beforehand. Like he didn't double check with her, I can take the RV out. I have to go on an errand. And she exploded at him, relieving him of duty alongside the members who had left in the RV with him just firing a bunch of her cult members and saying, you can't split up the convoy. Otherwise, our military is going to shoot you. Okay.

Where is the military that's going to shoot you? What military? Yeah. Right. Yeah, what military? And the former member who gets kicked out is that guy named Cowan, who was, he was disturbed at how distraught one of the cult members was that she fires. That, like, he's kind of, I think, done with it at this point when she fires him.

He's like, good. I'm out of here. But this lady's like losing her mind, weeping and stuff. Quote, she really thought it was her destiny to be there. And I think that that gets, that really gets to something important. I tried to emphasize a few times. Some people are begging to be an occult, right? They are desperate for any kind of meaning, right?

Yeah. Even this, even something that it's something. It's more meaningful than go to work and pay your bills, right? Yeah. Anything. Yeah, something important. Nah, now we're getting at something. Because to weep about this rather than being like,

this game is trash. This was fucked up from the beginning. And again, there's something like almost physically painful to some people that being cut off from this. When you finally found it, right? When you finally found the thing that gives you a sense of belonging and you get kicked out of it, like that's like losing a limb. Cohen, though, is, you know, he's fed up by the time he gets fired.

And so he takes his personal video and recording equipment with it. him. He's one of the guys who knew how to do things who joined the cult. And the queen is not happy about this. She gets on telegram. She declares him a thief. She claims he's kidnapped other staff who left with him. She posts videos of Cohen along with his picture and links to his social media. She calls him a devil worshipper and she sentences him to death. And her followers, you know, attack him with as much zealusiness as they'd attacked all of the other enemies of the group. Yeah. One follower posted he will not survive what is coming.

Another added that Cohen was, quote, a fan of Satan and a traitor. And another wrote, maybe he should be the first to hang publicly for all the other traders to see what to expect. So that's kind of a blister of at least things that are adjacent to death threats. And all Cohen could do was sort of hunker down to avoid the storm. I didn't answer a single phone call, but my phone was constantly blowing up with telegram messages and text messages. Then a few people found my personal Facebook page and commented randomly on some posts. One of them, like a 60-year-old woman who looks really nice, and she was like, you will burn. What?

Well, it's just the amount of rage when you tell people like this. Yeah. Your bullshit game that has become the entire core of your, like, life. This is the only thing that excites you. This is like, this is your friend group. This is you're addicted to this. And this guy doesn't believe it. He left, even though he actually just.

got fired, like, yeah, you get enraged. And in part, you're kind of taking out your anger at the rest of the world on this person. Because at some level, they all know this isn't real, right? And that makes them pissed. Yeah. So, as you might get from some of this, Romana's not wildly loyal to her cult members. And in fact, she is so unsatisfied with the quality of her first band of cult members that she fires them all.

This is one of my favorite things about her story. It also kind of hints at the weird resilience of her grift. From what I can tell, it sounds like the breakdown started because she was planning to extend her road trip into the United States and a desperate attempt to avoid going back to her normal life and to try to get some of that American money, right? Yeah. But some of her followers, including Corey and Daisy, had children and were like, well, that we were just going to Ottawa and then you wanted to drive around for a few months and we were down with that, but we can't do this forever. And so Roman is like, well, if you have kids, simply move them in with your family and then abandon them for the cause. and a few of her followers have kids and they're like, what?

Okay. I didn't think that's what we were doing. This, yeah, guys, abandoned shit, man. Yep, yep. So this is all coming to a head as the caravan makes its way into Newfoundland, which is not a heavily populated part of Canada. And they're kind of in the middle of nowhere

of Newfoundland, which is itself kind of in the middle of nowhere. And the day after she makes everyone listen to Rasputin for 10 hours while driving through the middle of nowhere, Canada, right? They're stopped. They're all tired. She probably keeps them up late. And then she wakes everyone up early, playing her fucking Rasputin's song and yelling about how there's a war on and says, everyone skip breakfast. We got to start driving right now. And Corey and Daisy have finally had enough. And they closed the door in her face. And they're like, no, we're going to sleep. Like, we're not getting up yet. And we're going to eat. And Queen de Jullo just leaves them.

She abandons almost base. Sounds like pretty much all of her staff. Two thousand miles away from her homes takes the RVs. That's like rent cars to get home. home. Okay. And declares them traitors and warns them to watch your backs. Just leaves them in Newfoundland. Traders. All right.

Yeah. Yeah. She's, yeah, she's smelling her own stuff way too much, man. Yeah. So, you know, not long after that in August of 2022, Queen DiJulo carries out her next major real world endeavor. This is in a town called Peterborough, where she has gotten, been convinced for a while and been ranting for a while about like the police in Peterborough and how they're enforcing

COVID mandates and whatnot. They're, they're corrupt. We're going to do a citizen's arrest. All that good stuff, right? Like that's, this is all kind of like, and it's a little hard for me to tell like why she focuses specifically on this small

town. I think maybe some of it is just that like, well, this was like a small enough town that maybe she thought it would work. Some of it is that one of her followers, this guy Frank Curtin lives in the town. And he starts, like, he organizes like a mass event to do a citizen arrest of all these police. So I think it may have just been that like she had a follower who was like, no, it'll work if we do it here.

Yeah. They have, there's this, they've got this meme going on that's like they're calling the police chief, the retire borough police chief because they're trying to get him to retire and threaten to arrest him if he doesn't. To quote from Sarteshi's piece about Frank Curtin. Curtin is one of Digilo's most ardent supporters and provides a useful example of an active agent. Curtin came to believe in Digilow's ideas after parting ways with his employer, approximately one year

before the Peterborough event. Problems began between Curtin and his employer when his employer received funds from the government to boost the manufacturing of hand sanitizer as part of the fight against COVID-19. Curtin considered this government funding suspicious. He believes that COVID-19 is fake and that his employer had collected that money illegally.

These conspiratorial beliefs then allegedly led to Curtin's departure from the company. After leaving the company, Curtin began regularly serving Digilo's ceased and desist orders to public officials. He then specifically targeted police chief Scott Gilbert of the Peterborough Police Department. Curtin was upset about not receiving from the police chief Gilbert what Gilbert deemed to be an appropriate response to his complaint about his employer's supposed illegal activities. Curtin recorded himself serving a cease and desist order upon Chief Gilbert and posted the video on his YouTube channel. Right? So, yeah.

This is a really good example of how these kind of things snowball, right? This is not a guy who's living with the caravan. He starts just serving her cease and desists, but she's following him. He's posting as he's in the telegrams. She's putting these up. He's talking about a corrupt the police are. Romana's like, oh, this might be useful. So she starts some memes about retire, you know, the police chief and we're going to arrest

all of them. And it just becomes an increasing thing to her followers. And this kind of makes it inevitable that there's going to be a showdown in Peterborough, right? Like they're going to have to do something there. Yeah. Yeah. This goes from funny to annoying to like, okay, you have to stop. Yeah.

Right, right. Yeah. And we're going to talk about what happened next, but first, ads. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark.

And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmen. all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on I Heart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. What do you do in the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins. And if you can hear me, is where culture meets the soul, a place for real conversation.

Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks. And we go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff, identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore, loss that changes you, purpose when success isn't enough, peace when your mind won't slow down, faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to if you can hear me on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm in Alec Lamoma.

It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated. And Black America was out of breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia at Martin's Almemata, Moore House College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people would die. In 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone.

The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to the A-building on the I-Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband, Mike, was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever.

I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. And immediately. The mask came off. You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband. So keep this secret for so many years. He's like a seasoned pro.

This is a story about the end of a marriage. But it's also the story of one woman who was done living in the dark. You're a dangerous person who prays on vulnerable and trusting people. Your creditor, Michael Levin Good. Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. So this guy, Frank Curtin, has become, gotten, you know, as a result of getting fired and losing his mind over, like, COVID stuff. Both lost his job and is increasingly becoming unhinged.

He's fallen into this rabbit hole of did you lo's stuff. And he's gotten obsessed with Chief Gilbert, his town's police chief. He's posting videos about how, like, there's this plane that. he'll see flying every now and then that he believes the police chief is flying above his house to like fuck with him specifically. So this is not a well man, right? This is really not a well man. And he's incredibly angry about like the vaccines and the police are showing up at like to protect

vaccine sites because of crazy people like Frank Curtin. Right. And so this all comes to a head in August of 2022, which is when Queen de Diodulo's caravan shows up in Peterborough for her next major real world endeavor. She's gathered around 40 of her followers, and she's told them these officers and their chief are all complicit in COVID crimes, and we're going to arrest them. And so they show up in this town,

and she attempts to arrest the entire police department. Frank Curtin starts by announcing, today we are going to turn the members of the Peterborough Police Station over to the U.S. Special Forces military, the Canadian military, and the global military alliance who will pick them up once we detained them. The who? Well, it makes a lot of sense, problem.

It's the U.S. Special Forces military, not the regular military. They're not involved. But the regular Canadian military is involved. And, of course, the Global Military Alliance. They're all going to show up after we arrest them. They can't arrest the cops themselves. Got it. All the militaries in the world.

They don't have the power. We the people have to do that. But then they'll detain them once we the people have detained them. In response, the police use one of the most dastardly tricks, right? These people show up outside of the police station. They say they're going to arrest them. And the cops lock the door. Just like, eh, not dealing with this right now.

Let's see if they go away. I'm almost on break, fam. Like, I don't want to deal with this today. So Didiolo is reduced for a while to heckling them over a bullhorn demanding the police turn themselves in. Eventually, the police reinforcements arrive. One man tells them they're under arrest. And the cops are like, no, I mean, like, you're actually under arrest. We are the cops.

We have like the guns and stuff. Yeah. You're just a guy. We're trying to be respectful, guys. We're really trying to be respectful. With some RVs behind you. Yeah. But you're not cops.

You are definitely not cops. Yeah. The Guardian summarizes what happened next. Speaking to supporters over a megaphone, Digilo fired up the small crowd, but fled to her RV when scuffles with the police began and some of her disciples were arrested. She was somebody who was boosting this effort and was very much in favor of it until

it went south. in which case she threw all of her followers under the bus. She's very big on self-preservation. Clearly. A quote from one of the observers. Yeah, six people were arrested, two with assaulting a police officer, but there were no charges for the queen. And so her merry road trip continued.

She gathered another gaggle of a dozen or so followers together. She bought a $62,000 RV with some of the donated money and had another RV donated to the cause. Wow. And she attempted, at this point, I do think, though, she's starting to see it's expensive to drive around all the time. I want to settle somewhere, but I can't get, I still am not willing to go back to my normal life, which is when she finds a small town called Richmond in 2023.

And she finds this because one of the guys who lives in the town has bought, Richmond had a school, but it's a very small town, right? And it's one of those things the school becomes defunct, you know? Okay. I think because there just like aren't enough people to keep it going. Yeah. And there's this local.

guy who's become a follower of her cult, or at least a partial follower of her cult, who buys, who's like purchased the school and the land that it's on. And he invites them to come over and like move in, basically. Like, hey, like, you can live in this old school that I technically own and live in Richmond, this tiny ass little small town in Canada. Does that sound like a good life? This don't sound royal, fam. Yeah. So there's, there's, a mix of problems. For one thing, there's a couple of people in town who believe her. So, like, at least one Richmond resident told W5 News that her father stopped paying his bills because Digilos said so. But a lot of people are just unhappy about it. For one thing, they've been

kicked out of at least one town prior to this where, like, they showed up and were trying to set up shop there and, like, the mayor and a bunch of the local residents had it out from and, like, ran them out of town by banking at a really uncomfortable place for them to live. Yeah. And they try to do that in Richmond. A lot of people do. There's a lot of complaints. There's local government meetings about it.

But they're not quite able to kick them out of Richmond with the speed that they want to because in part, they have a really good thing going. They have this whole school that they can live in, that they're turning into like their government headquarters. So they don't want to go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We finally got some progress. Yeah.

Right. I think there's also she's starting to lose. followers by this point. She's not at her height. Um, so I, I think there's this understanding that like, well, I may be near the end of the script in the beginning and I want to settle down somewhere where like we've got a stable place to live and whatnot. Like maybe that's the, and man's, who's the guy who's bought them to the property is also just kind of somebody who's, he's like a right wing crank who hates the COVID-19 vaccine. And so some of this is just, I think he hates everyone around him and wants to piss them off.

Yeah. This is a huge issue in Richmond for a while, right? There's protests. Some people do go a little bit overboard in being paranoid about the cult, too, but I understand basically they don't want these people fucking up their little town, right? Yeah, it's weird. And she starts making claims in the cult does that, like, well, there's a lot of us, if we all become residents, you know, we can vote in local elections and shift the elections. They're kind of doing like what that cult in Antelope, Oregon did, that wild, wild country does. They're talking about it, right? So, This also really pisses off people. Like, I don't want my tiny town to be taken over by these weird assholes, right? Yeah, it just sounds like, yeah, kind of shitty. So, you know, this goes on for, I think, like a year and change. And it only really hit, there's like kind of an inflection point that came recently where a bunch of them got arrested very recently. Like, this is. Finally.

Yeah. I yeah, fucking finally, right? In September, like the fall of 2025, she gets arrested. And it's, it's kind of some bullshit. She doesn't get arrested for any of the actual, like, really fucked up shit that she does. Yeah, it's still ACAP, but. Yeah, right. Like, she gets arrested.

It's not even that. It's just like they, they don't arrest her for the actual bad stuff. They arrest her for, like, intimidating. for people, including a police officer, and, like, basically for intimidating people in town, as opposed to the time she tried to get people killed or tried to have all those police arrested or got people to stop paying their bills. It's, like, kind of, like, witness intimidation almost. Yeah, he just arrested you for being weird.

They arrested her for being weird. And she's, you know, she livestreams the arrest. there's this satisfying moment where the officers are like leave the phone here under her arrest they part of what it prompted the RCMP to raid in the first place

was that there were pictures of guns from inside the property but they turned out to be replica handguns I don't know how far this case is going to go there's a good chance she gets fucked over just because she is representing herself which is a bad decision

so she might fuck herself over here but the charges aren't super crazy, right? Like, she's not getting charged with most of the actual bad cult leader stuff. Maybe she'll successfully fundraise off of this. We don't really know where things are going to go from here, right? But there's no body count. No, there's not a body count other than that cat, maybe.

Other than the cat. It's a pretty tame story, right? It's just, I thought it was fun. I thought we'd all have some fun. This is great, man. Yeah. It's good stuff. It's like, yeah, like, you don't make fun of, like, people who fall into cults.

Because like you said, you know, glass houses and stones and all that, you know. And then on the other hand, it's like, bro, you stop paying your utilities. And that wasn't. I feel like I can make fun of you for that. Yeah. Now, there is a nice little postscript to this cold. Because we don't know what's going to happen with Ramana. But I do want to talk for just a second about the King of America, David Carlson.

Okay. Yes, please. Because he did crop up a year or two ago, and people started talking to him. And at first he was very positive towards Romana. And then he kind of soured on her. And he started making it clear, like, oh, I didn't say she was the queen. I said she was, like, in the running to be the queen. Like, she might be, right?

That's not what I said. The two of them have had a break, right? And there's a, I want to read. I'm just going to read the start of this, this Vice article about him, because it has a really funny opening. Wearing a Florida Gators t-shirt, an Arizona man in his mid-40s attempts to convince the hundreds of thousands of conspiracy theorists watching his laptop live stream that he's the real leader of the United States.

King David Carlson explains that he still has a few million people to take out before he's finally done with his plan, installing QAnon kings and queens around the world. Around the world. He's great. He claims they've replaced Joe Biden was taken out on Election Day. We've replaced sheriffs and other leaders, you know. And we're, and he's been a. appointing a lot of kings. He's appointed a king to the kingdom of Britain, which I think

already has a king. It does. There's a king to the kingdom of Sweden, which I think already has a queen. There's a king of New Zealand, which I don't think had a king. He was Maori. There's a minister of North Carolina. There's a queen, Helen Edwards, of the kingdom of Australia. And then there's Her Excellency Karen, minister of New Jersey, obviously. Oh, these guys are, they're so wonderful, man. Yeah, they're great. This is fun. They're great, dude. My favorite is that since Queen Romana has fallen out of the king's favor, she's no longer the Queen of Canada, but he has appointed a new Queen of Canada.

A Quebec woman who was a follower of Queen Romana and wrote a fan poem about her, but has now been appointed the real Queen of Canada. And so I guess took the throne in a coup of some sort. This is great. This is great. Wild times. And there's a great, I'm going to show you, the last thing I'll show you is I want to show you the royal seal of. I think who we can all agree is a better pick for Queen of Canada. Queen Charmaine.

And I just, I just love this. I love this, folks. Please show me Queen Charmaine. Queen Charmaine of Canada, first of her name. It's like a pink logo with a very airbrushed face of a blonde woman. Queen Charmaine written in tiaras. Yeah, natural laws, zero politics, royal decrees, benevolent monarchy.

It's like if Mar-a-Lago face in Tidler's and Tiara's were like, shoo. This is, this is, this is, this is every mom on Instagram who shouldn't be on Instagram, keeping all them filters on her face. Yep. Packs. Wow. Queen Charmaine. Thanks for sharing, Robert.

Thank you, Charmaine. Well, I know for, for my part, I now have, am declaring my allegiance to Queen Charmaine, you know. I will take Queen Charmaine. Yeah, let's do it. All right, everybody. Queen Charmaine, it is, everyone. All right, as long as I can shower. Listen.

Sure. She looks like she showers. She showers a lot. All I got to say is listen to Hood Politics with Prop. Please listen to Hood Politics with Prop with some more of this foolishness. Oh, my gosh. My Lord, thank you, thank you for this. I needed this.

This is refreshing. Thank you, Robert. All right, everybody. This could have been a reverse bastards. I ain't going to hold you. Like, just for the rest of the rest of the show. Go to hell. I love you.

Is that what you said, Robert? Yeah, I say that sometimes. That's nice. All right. Bye. Behind the bastards is a production of Coolzone Media. For more from Coolzone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the IHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you guys. at your podcast. Full video episodes with Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash at Behind the Bastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking. You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me is where culture meets the soul, honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between.

Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers. Most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to if you can hear me on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the last couple years, didn't we learn that the folding chair was invented by black people because of what happened in Alabama? This Black History Month, the podcast.

This Black History Month, the podcast Selective Ignorance with Mandy B. Unpacks Black History and Culture with comedy, clarity, and conversations that shake the status quo. The Crown Act in New York was signed in July of 2019, and that is a bill that was passed to prohibit discrimination based on hair styles associated with race. To hear this and more, listen to Selective Ignorance with Mandy B from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband, Mike, was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever. I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing.

And immediately, the mask came off. You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband. Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. At a Morehouse college, the students make their move.

These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the board of trustees, including Martin Luther King's senior. It's the true story of protests and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm in a Nicolmob. Listen to the A building on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast Guaranteed Human