Alex Jones Net Worth: Defamation Landed Him $1.2 Billion in the Red

Alex Jones is a far-right political extremist and conspiracy theorist. His name has been buzzing in the world of media for quite some time now, especially since he was sued for defamation over claims he made about the parents of victims of the 2022 Sandy Hook school shooting. Taking into account the wealth he built from his various businesses as well as his debt of approximately $1.5 billion in damages to his victims, Alex Jones’ net worth in 2024 is -$1.23 billion.

Jones became known nationally as the host of the The Alex Jones Show and founder of the Info Wars media brand. He’s also an entrepreneur who sells products through his website. However, in October 2022, a jury in Connecticut ordered him to pay over a billion dollars to victims of an elementary school mass shooting, an amount that remains unpaid to date (likely because he doesn’t have the money to pay it).

This article breaks down Alex Jones’ rollercoaster of a life, his initial success in controversial media, and how he went bankrupt after years of making millions.

Alex Jones’s Net Worth Breakdown:

Determining exactly how much Alex Jones has in his net worth today is impossible considering that his businesses are privately owned and he hasn’t revealed how much debt from the defamation suit he has left to pay. Jones is appealing the court’s decision to this day, meaning that the amount might change in the future if he is successful. We scoured the web to find any and all information that would help us build a careful estimate of his net worth and reached a figure of about -$1.23 billion.

Alex Jones’s Early Life

Alex Jones was born on February 11, 1974, in Dallas, Texas, and spent most of his childhood in Rockwell before his family moved to Austin. He attended Anderson High School in Austin, followed by a short period at Austin Community College before he dropped out to work on a live call-in TV program.

Jones started his career in the early 1990s and soon after, he gained somewhat of a following for his creative broadcasts.

Alex Jones Net Worth: Making and Losing Millions

The journey of Alex Jones is a unique one. He doesn’t exactly have a profession but managed to add millions to his net worth in just a few years. Let’s see how his fortune fluctuated over the years.

Early Beginnings

Jones began working in a public access live call-in TV program for a few years before switching to radio in 1996. He hosted a show on KJFK named The Final Edition, with former Texas Representative Ron Paul being one of his most frequent guests.

In 1999, Jones was voted by the readers of the Austin Chronicle as the year’s poll Best Austin Talk Show Host but in that same year, KJFK fired him for refusing to make changes to his program. Reportedly, the station couldn’t sell enough ads to make a profit because Jones’ views were too restricted and he didn’t want to broaden the topics.

In 2000, Alex Jones became a candidate for State Representative in the Texas House 48th district, but he decided to withdraw from this race only a few weeks later. At this point, he was already spreading conspiracy theories and claimed to be running for the position of “a watchdog from the inside”. The reasons for his backing out are unknown but he was unlikely to have won the race anyway.

The Alex Jones Show

The Alex Jones Show, which he continues to host today, is broadcast from Austin, Texas across the United States via syndicated and internet radio, by the Genesis Communications Network. This is one of the two main platforms Jones has used over the years.

Jones started broadcasting The Alex Jones Show from his own home soon after he was fired from KJFK.

On the day of the 9/11 attacks, he shared on his radio show that there was a “98 percent chance this was a government-controlled bombing”, arguing that the Bush administration orchestrated the attack. As a result, several stations dropped his program, but this also brought him great fame – he became a leading figure of the “9/11 truther” cause at the time.

As he proceeded to share his conspiracy theories, he gained a bigger and bigger following. By 2010, the show had two million listeners tuning in every week, which was more than Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh had, combined.

Listeners loved that he seemed to be ‘speaking truth to power’ when spouting off about his various theories.

In 2010, The Alex Jones Show was syndicated by the Genesis Communication Network and available on more than 100 radio stations in the US.

In 2016, Jones shared with The Washington Post that his show had a daily audience of five million and that his video streams had over 80 million viewers in a month.

InfoWars

Jones is the co-founder, publisher, and director of the conspiracy and fake news website InfoWars. InfoWars was originally created by Alex and his now-former wife Kelly Jones in 1999. It started as a mail-order outlet where the couple sold their videos sharing conspiracies. Today, it is entirely owned by Alex Jones.

Jones eventually hired right-wing YouTuber, radio host, and conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson to be Editor-at-Large of InfoWars. Soon after, during the runup and aftermath of the 2016 election, the site saw tremendous success. It attracted over 10 million visits, making it more popular than mainstream news sites like Newsweek and The Economist.

Alex Jones’s Net Worth Over the Years

According to court testimony Jones gave back in 2014, InfoWars had revenues of $20 million a year at the time, and two-thirds of Jones’ funds came from advertising spots and sales on the website. The website currently sells dietary supplements, toothpaste, ‘brain pills’, and bulletproof vests.

Between September 2015 and 2018, the store made $165 million in sales. The exact portion of these earnings for Jones is unknown. However, over his years operating InfoWars, Jones has earned tens of millions and, while the exact net worth isn’t known, this reportedly reached as high as $100 million at one point.

According to the July 2022 bankruptcy filing by Free Speech Systems, the company paid $62 million in member draws between 2021 and 2022, but since he was the only member of the LLC, we can only assume that this $62 million went directly into his net worth. If we take out the taxes, he added at least $30 million to his net worth solely from these two years.

Between 2018 and 2021, court records showed that Alex drew $18 million in income from Free Speech Systems LLC and in dividends. And, once his lawyers leaked Jones’ entire text history, the world learned that InfoWars grossed $800,000 in a single day during the 2018 CPAC Conference.

During the Austin trial back in August 2022, Bernard Pettingill, a financial expert, testified on behalf of the family of Jesse Lewis to ascertain the true net worth of Alex Jones. His estimates set this at around $270 million, a figure that Jones disputed afterward.

If we stop to consider that he spent $15 million on legal expenses in the last couple of years, his net worth is already significantly lower, and he has yet to pay the defamation case fine of over $1 billion.

The Jones net worth never reached a billion – and most likely didn’t even come close – which is why his net worth today is below zero, provided that he will soon pay the money he owes to the grieving families.

Alex Jones’ False Sandy Hook Claims

In addition to his popular 9/11 conspiracy theories, Jones promoted a range of unfounded ideas, especially at the point when his fortune was at its peak. He was one of the most vocal advocates for the theory that the devastating Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 was a hoax.

In 2012, 26 people, including 20 children, were killed by a gunman at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, leaving many families in mourning. Jones whipped up a false conspiracy theory based on no strong evidence.

He claimed that it was a government (or at least political) false-flag operation intended to get Americans to support anti-2nd Amendment legislation. Trying to support his theory, he insulted the grieving parents of the victims by claiming that their behavior was strange and fake.

During the second defamation trial, a video was shown of Jones mocking the parents of the victims, referring to them as “crisis actors” and saying that they were “method acting”. “It’s just the fakest thing since the $3 bill”, he says in the video.

This dissemination of false information led to many bans from social media platforms, not to mention numerous threats against the Sandy Hook families from his diehard listeners.

Jones Faces Consequences for Sandy Hook Defamation

In November 2021, Jones and his varied companies were sued for defamation and found liable. Several families sued Alex Jones and his businesses for defamation. Not only did the Sandy Hook families win in court, but they won an actual fortune – far higher than the net worth of the conspiracy theorist.

On August 3, 2022, a jury in Austin ordered Jones to pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages to the first family that won a defamation trial. That same jury ordered him to pay $45 million in punitive damages. In October, he was ordered to pay $965 million to 15 plaintiffs in damages. In November, a judge in Connecticut added $473 million in damages. To date, Alex Jones owes $1.5 billion to the Sandy Hook families, a sum that is not paid yet and may never be.

Eventually, a trust was set up to compensate the plaintiffs. Jones was forced to transfer his equity in the LLCs to the trust. So far, he has contributed $750,000 from his personal net worth to cover legal work.

Towards the end of 2023, Jones’ media company proposed a plan in the bankruptcy case where the InfoWars founder would get a salary of $520,000 a year. The business will pay $7 to $9 million annually to creditors, including the Sandy Hook families. They are seeking court approval to increase Jones’ salary to $1.5 million and pay the Sandy Hook parents in increments with the remaining revenue of the company Free Speech Systems.

It remains unclear how much money the Sandy Hook families will get in the end, especially since Free Speech Systems, the parent company of InfoWars, and Jones are appealing the verdicts and have already filed bankruptcy claims.

On December 2, 2022, Jones filed for personal bankruptcy protection in Texas, where he listed $0 to $10 billion in liabilities owed to 99 creditors against $1 to $10 million worth of assets. However, a US bankruptcy judge in Houston ruled that despite the petitions, he still must pay the money in defamation damages as ordered by the courts in the Lone Star State and Connecticut.

Christopher Mattei, a Connecticut lawyer for the Sandy Hook families, has stated:

The families are pleased with the Court’s ruling that Jones’s malicious conduct will find no safe harbor in the bankruptcy court. As a result, Jones will continue to be accountable for his actions into the future regardless of his claimed bankruptcy.

Where is Jones Today?

According to the Washington Post, Alex Jones continues to live his lavish lifestyle despite the court decisions. He reportedly spent over $93,000 in July on excessive household expenditures such as housekeeping, entertainment, meals, and groceries, according to financial documents filed and obtained by the media outlet.

In fact, when the court ruled in the families’ favor, Jones asked the audience to shop on InfoWars because he was officially out of money.

Records also show that he has been paying his ex-wife Erika Wulff Jones $15,000 a month despite the ruling, making the grieving families increasingly concerned and frustrated. While he claims that this is required under their prenuptial agreement, others say that these are fraudulent transfers. We are yet to learn what the truth behind these expenses is.

Right now, he’s denying any financial wrongdoing, saying:

I’m not Lex Luthor … when it comes to finances and life. I mean, I’m a straight-up guy. I’m a do-good in Mayberry RFD.

Alex Jones’s Business Ventures and Investments

For the most part, Jones’ fame revolves around his conspiracy theories, but this is not the only thing he’s dabbled in over the years. Let’s see what he has done so far.

In 1998, Jones produced a film called America: Destroyed by Design. Since then, he released nearly 20 other documentaries, as well as two books:

• 9-11: Descent into Tyranny in 2002
• The Answer to 1984 is 1776 in 2008

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Jones claimed that the products he sold were a treatment for the virus. He was first issued a cease-and-desist by the Attorney General of New York in 2020 and was later warned by the FDA that the government would seize products and fine him if he continued to sell them.

In 2023, Jones launched a podcast called Alex Jones Live. The podcast was subscription-based and is currently put on hold due to the Sandy Hook case.

Real Estate

At least a third of Jones’ net worth prior to the Sandy Hook case was in the form of stocks and real estate assets. Today, he still lives in his Austin mansion worth between $2 and $2.5 million. He also owns at least three other properties in Texas. His full real estate portfolio is estimated at $7.5 million.

He most likely keeps most of these properties in his ownership even today, considering that the money he spent in July included $6,700 for maintenance and property taxes for his Texas lake house, while he spent over $3,400 for meals and entertainment in his primary residence.

Stocks

Reportedly, Jones has over $4 million in stocks in companies including Walmart, Boeing, Berkshire Hathaway, and Coca-Cola. He hasn’t revealed much about his portfolio since the defamation suit so he may have already sold these holdings.

Car Collection

Over the years, Jones has lived quite the lavish lifestyle and had several highly-priced vehicles in his garage, including:

• Ford F-150
• Toyota Camry
• Porsche Cayenne
• Tesla Model Y
• Chevy Colorado

We don’t know whether he still owns all of these vehicles but he likely still owns and uses at least a few vehicles. According to his financial documents, he actually spent over $5,600 on insurance, maintenance, and fuel for his vehicles and boats in July 2023.

What Can We Learn From Alex Jones’ Story?

Alex Jones’ story teaches us two highly important things. On one side, it is impressive, because the man made his money from scratch, by dabbling in something not many people do – underground media and conspiracy theories. He took his theories to such a level that he legally made a fortune selling stories and products, showing that anyone can become a successful entrepreneur with determination and a little luck.

Many of the most important lessons to be learned from Jones’ life come from his mistakes. He seems to never know when to admit that he is wrong and frequently supports harmful conspiracies without the requisite evidence. For a while, it didn’t seem like he would face the consequences of his actions but the Sandy Hook defamation suit finally changed that.

Not only is he no longer a millionaire, but he is now over a billion dollars in debt, and he will have to pay the parents of the victims far in the future, possibly even until his death.