Anti-migrant vigilante crowdfunds £85,000 in a month – but fails to stop boats

Daniel Thomas, the hate influencer who slashed a dinghy with a rescuer on board, has earned at least £85,000 in donations in the last 30 days, The i Paper can reveal. Thomas, who recently appeared in a video alongside the far-right leader Tommy Robinson while wearing a designer jumper worth £430, has been asking his followers to send him money. One of these donations came from a disabled pensioner who sent £10 to the 37-year-old leader of Patriot Platform, a network of anti-migrant vigilantes that protested in Dover and Portsmouth earlier this month. Some of the largest donations appear to have come from America. Shorts Thomas, a former public schoolboy who asks people to call him “Danny Tommo”, has set up two crowdfunding campaigns. One claims to be collecting cash for “critical resources and equipment”. This has raised more than £22,000 for Thomas in the last three months. Thomas, wearing a jumper that retails for more than £400, in conversation with Tommy Robison (Photo: Daniel Thomas/YouTube) The second sought funds to relocate Thomas’ mother after he claimed The Daily Mail revealed where she lived. The paper named the town she resides in after Thomas publicly registered his business to her address. Thomas has subsequently shared details of her address on two different live streams. This crowdfunder has now been pulled offline, after reaching £68,501 in donations. The true extent of Thomas’ earnings from his followers is not known. He has a PayPal account, in which donations are not publicly visible, and his X and YouTube accounts are monetised, meaning he receives an income from these platforms depending on how popular his posts are. Thomas has offered little transparency over how any of the funds he has collected have been spent. He did not respond to a request for comment. However, some detail can be gleaned from the agitator’s extensive online presence. Funds for sunken boats Thomas has raised £22,319 in three months, with £16,547 of that being donated within the last 30 days, according to open source analysis. Among the donations that appear online are a £4 donation from someone described as an “English Grandma”, while a “72-year-old disabled pensioner” gave him £10. Meanwhile, £5 was given by a “very concerned English, white pensioner”, who wrote: “well done Danny, I know its small…”. The donations claim to be for “critical resources and equipment”. Thomas has over recent months shared his hopes to launch a flotilla of boats to stop the small boat crossings of asylum seekers in the English Channel. He was forced to downgrade his plan to flood the Channel with 50 boats when he was only able to purchase a single small fishing vessel. He used it once, and then it became damaged and sank. Thomas, who has a combined 770,000 followers across Instagram, X, and YouTube, appealed for help paying “just over £2,000” for bills relating to the boat. He has not stated how the boat was damaged, although he claimed in one video in June that “lefties” were looking to “sabotage” his plans. Two months later, he shared another clip showing the extensive damage, where he did not blame anyone else. A report from The Times found the boat had sunk after “developing mechanical issues”. Around 450 donations have come in for Thomas in the last 30 days, the largest of which was £2,500. Two of the five largest donations appear to originate from America, each for £500. One donor sent the money without a note but gave their name as “US patriot support”, while the other wrote: “For the most vulnerable in the UK, from the US”. It is not the first time Thomas has received funds from the USA, telling a podcast that he once received £30,000 from an American think-tank to help organise a march for far-right activist Robinson – whom he worked as a former bodyguard for – in 2018. Funds for his mother Thomas promoted a second fundraiser after he claimed that his mother had been “doxxed” – meaning her address had been made public on the internet without permission. He blamed this on The Daily Mail, though in reality, the address was publicly available online because Thomas himself had registered it as a business address on Companies House. He claimed to be raising money to re-house his mother, and pulled the fundraiser offline after it reached £68,501. The original target had been set at £10,000. Thomas commented online that: “At my mother’s request, she will only use what she needs to safely relocate herself and start again.” He said the “remaining funds will be used to instruct a top legal team” to take action against the newspaper. Slashing empty boats for views Thomas has gained mainstream attention in recent weeks under the banner of his Patriot Platform group, which has rallied masked men to take over parts of Dover and Portsmouth in anti-migrant protests. On Tuesday, Thomas did eventually get his hands on a boat to sail across the Channel. He was filmed slashing a dinghy that had been used in a crossing, but he had waited until the migrants aboard it had been rescued and the boat was no longer in use. “Make sure its [the camera] is on me,” he said to camera as he got into position from his own small boat, with a knife in his hand, before he stabbed the side of the vessel. Police are now “conducting enquiries” into the incident after it emerged that a member of the French rescue team who intercepted the dinghy was still on board. Thomas slashes a dinghy in the Channel with a blade while a rescue worker is still on board (Photo: Daniel Thomas/YouTube) The latest video is reminiscent of stunts performed by Thomas last year, which first sparked his growing social media following. He first filmed himself slashing empty dinghies that had been abandoned on French beaches in November last year. Since then, he has grown from 14,000 followers on Instagram to 400,000 now, according to analytics from SocialBlade. Thomas originally linked up with a Birmingham-based flag-raising group called Raise the Colours and made several trips to France with them. Ten members of the group were subsequently banned from the country for their actions. Thomas and others also hatched a plan to take UK police by surprise and storm the Channel with boats under the banner of “Operation Overlord”. They were overheard loudly planning the mission – which never came to fruition – over a pub lunch. The real “Operation Overlord” – the codename for the Allies’ invasion of occupied Europe during the Second World War – was considered a complete success and devised in absolute secrecy. Earlier this year, Thomas was ejected from the group in a public spat that divided the group’s online supporters and saw vague allegations of misuse of donations, among other criticisms. No evidence was supplied by either side and all vehemently denied any wrongdoing. Voice notes shared by anti-fascist magazine Searchlight appear to show Thomas asking for a “salary” from the donations. Thomas was approached about this claim but did not respond. The number of people arriving in the UK in the first half of 2026 is down 41 per cent on the year before, Government figures show, with the National Crime Agency (NCA) stating law enforcement activity has been a “key factor” in reducing the number of crossings.