Twitter banned a notorious promoter of the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory on Friday, in one of the first prominent QAnon bans on the social platform since Twitter announced a QAnon crackdown on Tuesday. One-time Twitter user @TommyG, who goes by the name Tommy Gelati, had amassed more than 230,000 followers on Twitter. He frequently used his following to whip up harassment campaigns against celebrities and corporations he accused, baselessly, of being involved in sex trafficking and even cannibalism.
Gelati’s ban came hours after The Daily Beast published a story on his 2004 bank robbery conviction, revealing how Gelati and two accomplices stole $202,000 from a bank where Gelati worked to cover his gambling debts. In response to the story, Gelati published a Twitter video in which he made various threats—an apparent violation of Twitter’s terms of service against spam and platform manipulation, as well as the site’s new, stronger stance against harassment from QAnon groups. The Twitter account for Gelati’s conspiracy theory podcast, which ranks among the top sports podcasts on the iTunes podcast charts, was also suspended.