Why Did An Anonymous Donor Give Alex Jones $1 Million in Bitcoin?

[Nevilledog]

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Rolling Stone
@RollingStone
A new report reveals an anonymous donor sent over $1 million in Bitcoin to a cryptocurrency wallet owned by Alex Jones and advertised on Infowars' website.

rollingstone.com
Why Did An Anonymous Donor Give Alex Jones $1 Million in Bitcoin?
A new report reveals an anonymous donor sent over $1 million in Bitcoin to a cryptocurrency wallet owned by Alex Jones and Infowars.
1:23 AM · Apr 30, 2022

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/alex-jones-infowars-bitcoin-donation-hatewatch-1345352/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/Ob8YU


A new report reveals an anonymous donor sent over $1 million in Bitcoin to a cryptocurrency wallet owned by Alex Jones and advertised on Infowars’ website, calling Jones’ financial situation into question despite owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to Sandy Hook families and filing for bankruptcy earlier this year.

An investigation by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog found that on April 23, an unidentified individual transferred 26 Bitcoin — worth roughly $40,000 each at the time — to a crypto wallet known to be controlled by Jones, according to blockchain data. (The wallet, one of four Jones used to openly solicit donations on his Infowars website, contained an estimated $37,000 in cryptocurrency before the massive Bitcoin transfer.) Just days later, on April 27, Jones withdrew all funds from the wallet and, according to SPLC Senior Investigative Reporter Michael Edison Hayden, quickly removed the wallet from Infowars’ donation page. At the time of the transfer, the wallet contained a whopping $1,387,673.19.

The mega donation, which represented roughly 80% of Jones’ total cryptocurrency donations received to date, wasn’t the first massive influx of crypto received by the conspiracy theorist in recent years. According to SPLC, a different donor deposited five Bitcoin across six separate transactions into one of Jones’ wallets in 2021, worth a total of $266,000 at the time. In November 2021 and January 2022, Jones also received around $7,800 in Ethereum from a donor who notable funneled crypto to other right-wing extremists — including the Idaho Freedom Foundation, Slightly Offensive and Defend Europa — as well as white nationalist groups VDARE and American Renaissance.

Earlier this month, Jones was accused of hiding financial assets to avoid paying restitution to families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting. (The families’ defamation lawsuits stem from Jones’ repeated claims that the mass shooting incident — which killed 26 individuals, most of them children — was a hoax.) A court motion filed in Texas examined by the Daily Beast claims that, since 2018, Jones has transferred millions of dollars from accounts controlled by Infowars parent company Free Speech Systems into a series of what the filing calls an “alphabet soup of shell entities” controlled by Jones and his family. Lawyers for the Sandy Hook families said the move was “designed to siphon off [Jones’] assets to make them judgment-proof.”

*snip*

[RockRaven]

1. To buy his silence about something (Jan 6th, gold/supplement scams, foreign misinfo?)...

Anything which might have come up if he had been thoroughly and properly deposed/interrogated.

[Thomas Hurt]

2. Isn't that really the main point of bitcoin. It can used by corrupt people to pay off

corrupt people and not have any records or trail.

[HariSeldon]

8. That is almost completely inaccurate

Bitcoin exists because of records kept. Anyone who wants to can download the block chain and trace any transaction back to its source (in terms of wallet IDs), which have to have gotten their Bitcoin from somewhere (even if it is mined). Large quantities of Bitcoin can only be purchased through an exchange, accumulated -- via mining -- over a long period of time, or transacted in the open through the blockchain. Mined coins might be fairly anonymous, but coins purchased at an exchange likely have some record kept (which can be subpoenaed by law enforcement or lawyers fighting bankruptcy).

There are other strategies for anonymizing Bitcoin balances, but with today's transaction fees it would either be expensive (shuffling balances among many wallets) or risky (transacting outside Bitcoin with someone to accept a bunch of Bitcoin and pay a similar amount from unrelated wallets into a bunch of your own wallets, which can't be technologically enforced because of the desire to avoid record in the blockchain) to use them.

[Thomas Hurt]

10. Thanks, I thought bitcoin was much more anonymous.

[dchill]

5. Ding, ding!

[Bristlecone]

7. I agree

[dalton99a]

14. Yep.

[jmowreader]

4. Figure out who this "anonymous donor" is

[LetMyPeopleVote]

6. I watched the bankruptcy hearing on Friday

The Bitcoin did not come up. There were twenty or so lawyers either at the hearing on the call and it was amusing.

One of the Texas cases was supposed to be in trial this week. The Jones bankruptcy attorneys remove the case to the Western District of Texas and moved the Connecticut case to a bankruptcy court in Connecticut. Right now, this mess is in three different bankruptcy courts which is nuts unless the goal is to slow things down. Both the Connecticut. and Texas plaintiffs have filed to send the case back to the state trial courts. I read the brief from the Texas plaintiffs, and they had fun pointing out the Texas courts have sanctioned Jones $1.3 million for discovery abuse, producing child porn as part of the discovery, threatening the plaintiff attorneys and lying to the court. Jones has gone through 10 sets of lawyers in the Texas case and the only attorneys currently of record are two weak criminal defense lawyers.

Both sets of plaintiffs have filed motions to dismiss the bankruptcy. Each motion was well done and Juanita Jean's son, Mark Bankston's, brief had fun pointing out that Jones has been fined $1.3 million for refusing to comply with the same disclosure requirements that Jones would have to comply with if he was a debtor in a Chapter 11. In addition, the US Trustee filed a very strong brief urging the court to dismiss this bankruptcy because it is in bad faith and misuse of bankruptcy for a tactical advantage. The judge seemed to like this brief.

I was able to get home from the office in time to hear the bankruptcy hearing. The judge let everyone speak their mind. The attorneys for Jones and the debtors kept on saying that if Jones is in a chapter 11, his show would be cancelled. Given that Jones is not on YouTube, twitter, Facebook or any other social media platform I have trouble seeing how this can happen. Again, Jones does not want to make the disclosures that he would have to make if he was a debtor in a Chapter 11.

One Jones attorney would not shut up and spoke for over 25 minutes and the hearing was an hour and five minutes. Jones wanted the court to appoint two trustees for the settlement trust today, but the Plaintiffs objected and got the court to consider the motions to dismiss. For purposes of appeal, the judge is going to hold a hearing on the motions to dismiss set out to give everyone time to file briefs. If the judge ruled today, there would be grounds for appeal. My setting the hearing over 21 days from the filing of the US Trustee motion, this removes one ground for appeal. This was to me a hint that the judge liked the US Trustee motion and brief.

Here is the setting of the nest hearing.

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The hearing was on both a telephone line and a video link where some Jones supporters were being assholes

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If anyone wants to watch the hearing, here is the information

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The fact that the judge set the hearing for the motion to dismiss first is a good thing. The hearing on the appointment of trustees and the approval of a one-sided trust agreement is set later.

I have read the briefs and I believe that Jones is trying to misuse the bankruptcy proceedings. I think that the judge will dismiss this fraudulent bankruptcy.

[Takket]

9. I'll tell you what........

we all know he's not bankrupt and is laundering money to hide it. But as you said the $1M donation came in and was NOT mentioned at the hearing, probably because no one knew about it yet.

So I sure as hell hope someone tipped off the Sandy Hook lawyers that this has happened because even if he WAS legit bankrupt, he certainly isn't NOW that he got a $1M cash infusion.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

12. The plaintiffs are suing Jones in state court for fraudulent transfers

The parents in the Texas Sandy Hook case filed last week a lawsuit to appoint trustee nd seek to void fraudulent transfers by Jones. Jones made millions in supplement sales but is only reporting $500,000 in ssets.

Link to tweet

[Fullduplexxx]

11. He was talking about an immunity deal and then this shows up

[LetMyPeopleVote]

13. Blockchain and crypto can be a boon for tracking financial crimes

I saw that Jones cleared the bitcoin from the wallet very quickly. Bitcoin is not used by smart crooks for money laundering. There are ways to trace bit coin transactions

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https://cointelegraph.com/news/blockchain-and-crypto-can-be-a-boon-for-tracking-financial-crimes

Despite a growing adoption rate and involvement of mainstream financial giants, however, naysayers continue to portray crypto as a tool for miscreants and criminals. Several crypto platforms and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols have been compromised over the years, owing to various code vulnerabilities or centralization problems. However, stealing of money is the easiest part, while moving that money and cashing it out is nearly impossible.

This is primarily because most crypto transactions are recorded on a public ledger, which acts as a permanent trail, and even if the hacker uses various coin mixing services to hide its origins, powerful transaction monitoring tools can eventually identify such illicit trails......

Dmytro Volkov, chief technology officer at crypto exchange CEX.IO, told Cointelegraph why the notion of crypto being primarily used by criminals is outdated:

“The misconception that crypto is predominantly used by criminals probably has roots in the days of the Silk Road. The truth is that the immutable aspect of the blockchain makes hiding transactions very difficult. In the case of Bitcoin, whose blockchain ledger is publicly available, a serious exchange with a competent analytics team can easily monitor and thwart hackers and launderers before the damage is done.”

He added that “As long as the security team stays proactive and ahead of the curve on blockchain technology, we can continue protecting our customers. As this industry continues to grow, I believe that this myth of crypto being used mainly by criminals will fade.”

Russia has too many issues to use bit coin on Jones.