– It’s like waking up from a bad dream, going into a nightmare day after day. – This is Maatje Benassi. Before the COVID-19 pandemic she and her husband Matt led pretty normal lives working for the U.S. military. – We don’t do anything, we just go to work, you know, ride our bicycles. – Now they’re at the center of an elaborate conspiracy theory. One of its biggest promoters is a man named George Webb. – This goes back to our story here, which is patient zero which is Maatje Benassi. – He’s a conspiracy theorist who has nearly 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. He falsely claims without any evidence that Maatje brought the virus to China during a cycling competition last October. – We are interwoven into his storyline now. He’s never gonna give it up. – Webb’s accusations are baseless and far-flung. – Benny Benassi, this story has a lot of Benassi, and this– – He even claims an Italian DJ, Benny Benassi, is part of the plot. – He’s also Dutch, and he’s the first coronavirus victim in Holland. – Well, no, guys, to be honest this is crazy. So I’m born and raised in Italy. – Have you been diagnosed with the coronavirus? – No, I’m okay, no fever, no nothing, no, no, no. – Maatje is in the U.S. Army Reserve and last October she competed in the Military World Games in Wuhan, China. (marching band music) Six months later, comments under Webb’s YouTube videos about the Benassis have become the stuff of nightmares. – “Execute them by firing squad.” “We need to be killing these key people.” “These people will get a bullet to the skull.” – It’s unreal. And the danger he put us in, unreal. – Okay, hello, everyone, it’s March 20th here– – The conspiracy theory has even reached China. Webb has been featured in media controlled by the Chinese Communist Party which has sought to deflect blame for the coronavirus. – Have you been able to get health protection from law enforcement? – Because they’re not direct threats where they say, “We’re coming to kill the Benassis tonight,” there’s not a lot that they can actually do. And then they say, “Go talk to a civil attorney.” So we did, and for folks like us it’s just too expensive to litigate something like this. – Is this Donie? – Is this George? – Yes, how you doin’, Donie? – Hi, George, how are you? Donie O’Sullivan here from CNN. We called Webb. He offered no substantive evidences for his claims about Maatje Benassi. Could you talk me through the specific evidence you have that she is, as you described, coronavirus patient zero? – Yeah. Well, I have to, there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence and then there’s a source here that I cannot reveal. – So specifically on Maatje Benassi, how do you know that she has the coronavirus or has antibodies, how do you know that for sure? – Well, I have a source at the Fort Belvoir Community Hospital and she actually works at, or I have someone saying that she works at the Fort Belvoir Community Hospital and she tested positive for the coronavirus. – She denies that. – She denies that? Did she deny that she works at the Fort Belvoir Community Hospital? – She denies that she’s had the coronavirus, that she’s had any symptoms of the coronavirus. She and her husband don’t have the coronavirus. The Benassis say YouTube isn’t doing enough to stop the spread of conspiracy theories. – When we get the video removed, how quickly do you think that video popped up in other places on YouTube? And then I had to go after each one of those occurrences. You just can’t keep up with it. – A YouTube spokesperson told CNN the company is committed to promoting accurate information about the coronavirus and taking down misinformation when it’s flagged by users. YouTube took down some trending comments under Webb’s videos after CNN asked about them. – Couple years ago I was diagnosed with a rare cancer. Dealing with that situation is way easier than trying to deal with this George Webb situation. – It’s getting out of hand and it needs to stop because you never know, somebody might take it so, maybe their parent or child died of the coronavirus and then they’re gonna come to my house, think I did this. But there are times that it gets to me. I just go in my own little place. But we will get through this. We will.
