Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones accused of hiding money from Sandy Hook families : NPR

InfoWars founder Alex Jones speaks to the media outside Waterbury Superior Court during his trial on September 21, 2022 in Waterbury, Connecticut in which he was being sued by several victims’ families for causing emotional and psychological harm after they lost their children in the Sandy Hook massacre.

Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images North America

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Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images North America

After claiming for years that he does not have the money to pay even a small fraction of the $1.3 billion he owes Sandy Hook families who won a defamation case against him, Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is now facing allegations that he engaged in a “flurry” of fraudulent transfers of some $5 million in cash, cars and property to his family members.

U.S. bankruptcy trustee Christopher Murray has filed three suits in federal bankruptcy court in Texas, asking the judge to undo what he calls a scheme “bearing the classic hallmarks… of actual fraudulent intent,” and to return the assets to Jones’s bankruptcy estate so they can eventually be distributed to the families.

“[Jones] understood he was facing massive liabilities” and he went to “extraordinary lengths” to try to protect his assets, including “sham transactions” to move assets beyond the reach of creditors, Murray wrote in court papers.

Attorneys for the families have long been accusing Jones of “shenanigans” to hide money.

“Alex Jones’s entire career has been built on lies so it is no surprise he would lie to hide his assets. He won’t get away with it, said Chris Mattei, one of the lawyers. “The families we represent are as determined as ever to enforce the jury’s verdict and he will never outrun it.”

Attorneys for Jones – and his father and ex-wife – did not immediately respond to requests for comment. His ex-wife called the lawsuits “harassment,” according to the Associated Press.

The Trustee’s lawsuits say Jones transferred assets to his ex-wife, Erika Wulff Jones, his father, Dr. David R. Jones, and a trust for his children; Mrs. Jones, Dr. Jones and the trust are also named as defendants. For example, the suits allege Jones transferred some $1.5 million in cash to his wife, purporting to owe her money under a premarital agreement that the trustee says was never actually ratified; he is accused of selling part of a Texas ranch to his father for $10 and back-dating papers to make it appear as if it happened years prior, which would have meant it was safe from collections; he allegedly paid more than $500,000 in cash to his father, trying to pass it off as “reimbursements,” and gifted his father three luxury vehicles in a transfer that “was so disorganized and harried” that Murray says Jones didn’t even know which cars they were.

Jones also allegedly transferred two condos worth some $1.5 million to the Alexander E. Jones Descendant and Beneficiary Trust, which he argues is unreachable by his creditors. But the trustee says Jones’s “enablers fumbled the proverbial ‘bag'” and never actually transferred one of the condos to the Trust.

“This mad dash to transfer property out of his name […] is indicative of the Debtor’s actual intent to hinder, delay, and defraud his creditors when he transferred that property,” Murray said in court papers.

For years, Jones has been claiming to be flat broke.

“We are literally on empty,” he said in a video posted in late 2023. “The money doesn’t exist. So I don’t like to laugh at these people,” he said referring to the families who sued him, “but, I mean, I don’t know how you don’t.”

Jones is now entitled to a jury trial on whether he intentionally hindered, delayed, or defrauded creditors.

“These type of transactions are as old as time itself and Jones shouldn’t be surprised when he’s on the losing end of these lawsuits later on,” says Bruce Markell, a former federal bankruptcy judge and now Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. “Jones is in the cross hairs of the trustee, and the trustee has a fairly accurate rifle.”

The Sandy Hook families sued Jones in Connecticut and in Texas in 2018 for what Murray describes as a “willful and malicious campaign of defamation and lies against the families” of the 20 first-graders and six educators killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in a 2012 shooting. The families say they were tormented and harassed by Jones followers who believed they were lying about the death of their children just to drum up support for gun control.

Jones’s bankruptcy case has been ongoing for some three years, frustrating families and even the judge. A bankruptcy auction that named the satirical site, The Onion, the winner was eventually rejected by Bankruptcy Court Judge Christopher Lopez. Families are now trying to pursue their claims in state courts, and Jones continues to appeal the judgements against him.

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