Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones filed for bankruptcy Friday, following a year in which juries ordered him and his company to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages for spreading false claims that a 2012 elementary school shooting was a hoax.
A court filing in Houston, Texas indicated Jones filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors with the U.S. bankruptcy court. The filing indicates Jones has between $1 million and $10 million in assets and between $1 billion and $10 billion in liabilities. The extent of Jones' total personal wealth is unclear.
The filing comes less than two months after a jury in the northeastern U.S. state of Connecticut found Jones should pay $965 million to the families of eight people killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
In August, a jury in Texas ordered him to pay $50 million to the family of a child killed in the attack.
In both cases, relatives of the 20 children and six adults killed in the school shooting testified that they were threatened and harassed for years by followers of Jones’ online program who believed the lies he told.
Jones was dismissive of both verdicts, and said the threats and harassment were never directly linked to him.
Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press and Reuters.
