Jones, who faces more than $1.4 billion in legal damages for defaming those families “has devised a new way to taunt them: wriggling out of paying them the money they are owed,” the Times reports. Here’s more from the report:
“Mr. Jones, who has an estimated net worth as high as $270 million, declared both business and personal bankruptcy last year as the families won historic verdicts in two lawsuits over his lies about the 2012 shooting that killed 20 first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
“A New York Times review of financial documents and court records filed over the past year found that Mr. Jones has transferred millions of dollars in property, cash and business deals to family and friends, including to a new company run by his former personal trainer, all potentially out of reach of creditors. He has also spent heavily on luxuries, including $80,000 on a private jet, bodyguards and a rented villa while he was in Connecticut to testify at a trial last fall.
“If anybody thinks they’re shutting me down, they’re mistaken,” Mr. Jones said on his new podcast last month.”
The report described the “stark reality” faced by the families because of the bankruptcy-law protections that have been afforded him: “
“It is not clear whether they will ever collect a significant portion of the assets Mr. Jones has transferred,” the report said. “So, their ability to get anything remotely close to the jury awards is inextricably tied to Mr. Jones’s capacity to make a living as the purveyor of lies — including that the shooting was a hoax, the parents were actors, and the children did not really die — that ignited years of torment and threats against them.”
