Alex Jones is 'moving money around' to avoid paying Sandy Hook defamation fines: report
Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is desperately attempting to evade restitution to the families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, to whom Jones was ordered to pay more than $1,500,000,000 in damages over his defamatory lies about the attack.
Jones and his media brands InfoW LLC, Prison Planet TV, and IW Health filed for bankruptcy in June as the fines began to mount. That petition was struck down.
“The judge's action allows the parents' defamation lawsuits against Jones to continue in Texas and Connecticut, where trials are pending on how much he should pay families after judges in both states found Jones and his companies liable for damages,” the Associated Press noted at the time. “The families' lawsuits say they have been subjected to harassment and death threats from Jones' followers because of the hoax conspiracy. Jones, based in Austin, Texas, has since said he believes the shooting did occur.”
But according to a Monday report in The Washington Post, the radio host has shuffled millions of dollars out of Free Speech Systems and into accounts held by various enterprises that are managed by his friends and family in an effort to skirt accountability.
"Between August 2020 and November 2021, Free Speech Systems signed promissory notes — essentially IOUs — for $55 million to cover what it said were past debts to a company called PQPR Holdings that Jones owns with his parents, according to financial records filed in court by Jones’s attorneys. PQPR, which is managed by Jones’s father, a dentist, had bought tens of millions of dollars in supplements for Jones that he then sold on his show, the records say. A lawyer for Free Speech systems has said in court that the debt accrued unnoticed due to sloppy bookkeeping," wrote business correspondent Jonathan O'Connell.
"An accountant hired by Jones calculated that Free Speech Systems had $79 million in liabilities at the end of May and only $14 million in assets, court records show. As a result, the Sandy Hook families could be left vying with other creditors — including the companies tied to Jones himself — to collect," O'Connell said.
Jones and Free Speech Systems refiled for bankruptcy protection in late July after his initial petition was rejected.
READ MORE: Alex Jones is abusing US bankruptcy law -- here's how
"The bankruptcy court will ultimately determine which creditors are paid and how much. It is examining whether the promissory notes to PQPR and other transactions are legitimate. Attorneys for PQPR have argued in court that it should be paid before unsecured creditors, a category that would include the Sandy Hook plaintiffs," O'Connell explained. "Attorneys for the Sandy Hook families contend in a separate suit filed in April in Texas state court that PQPR is 'not actually an independent business' and that Jones has engaged in fraudulent transfers to shield his wealth. They have argued in bankruptcy court that Jones began moving money out of Free Speech Systems only after he began to face legal setbacks in the defamation cases."
O'Connell added that "the bankruptcy judge in Texas, Christopher M. Lopez, is expected to determine whether Jones engaged in fraudulent tactics designed to wall off assets from creditors. If the court finds that he did, the money that has been paid out or committed as debt could be divvied among creditors, said Georgetown University law professor Adam J. Levitin, an expert in corporate bankruptcy."
Levitin told O'Connell that "there is nothing beyond a real Hail Mary route for him to avoid liability at this point."
Jones, meanwhile, has maintained that the Sandy Hook families "just misrepresent how much money I have. It’s a total fraud.”
READ MORE: Alex Jones concedes Sandy Hook massacre was '100% real'
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