Broadcaster Alex Jones is on the hook for roughly $1.5 billion in damages to the families of the victims of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. The damages were rewarded by two juries, one in Texas and one in Connecticut. Now it's being reported that Jones has been concealing and/or transferring his wealth in order to avoid paying out the damages.
Alex Jones has been reportedly performing various financial maneuvers over the last few years as he faced multiple lawsuits from Sandy Hook families. These include transferring money and other assets and declaring bankruptcy both as an individual and through his corporation Free Speech Systems last year.
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As he is reported to have said on his "InfoWars" program last year:
"I'm officially out of money, personally…It's all going to be filed. It's all going to be public. And you will see that Alex Jones has almost no cash."
But a New York Times investigation uncovered that during Jones's time spent in Connecticut for one of those lawsuits last year, he spent $80,000 on a private jet, spent money on private security and a villa, while making various financial transfers at the same time.
In February of last year, Jones is reported to have transferred his expansive estate in Austin, Texas to his wife Erika Wulff Jones. In response to these and other similar actions, a lawsuit was filed by Sandy Hook families accusing Jones of fraudulently concealing funds, including as much as $11,000 per day and "up to 80 percent of his [diet] supplement sales."
The NYT report also cited a financial disclosure Jones made to bankruptcy court in Texas that claimed he had about $5.6 million in assets to his name. But, another statement last month filed by Jones's lawyers claims that he has money in multiple bank accounts that he isn't personally aware of and actually has more like $10 million worth of property. The statement also puts his monthly income at $129,000.
Mark Blanston is one of the attorneys representing Sandy Hook families in their legal fight to secure their rightfully owed damages from Jones. He tells NYT that the fight could be a long one:
"There's a chance we're going to be forced into a situation where we're going to be checking to see how 'InfoWars' is doing every month to figure out if our clients are getting paid or not."
Free Speech Systems, Jones's company and the parent corporation of "InfoWars," proposed a bankruptcy structure in March that would give Jones a salary of $520,000 per year and between $7 million and $10 million a year to pay his various creditors, including the families he owes damages to.
