Alex Jones ordered to pay an additional $473 million in punitive damages after nearly $1 billion verdict in Sandy Hook case

• Judge Barbara Bellis ordered Alex Jones to pay $473 million in punitive damages on Thursday.
• This is in addition to the nearly $1 billion verdict the jury ordered Jones to pay in the case.

A Connecticut judge on Thursday ordered Alex Jones to pay $473 million in punitive damages to the families of victims who died in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, according to multiple reports.

This is in addition to the nearly $1 billion in compensatory damages the jury in the case ordered Jones to pay the plaintiffs last month, for spreading a lie that the shooting was staged by the government as a pretense to restrict gun rights. Separately, Jones was ordered to pay the parents of Sandy Hook victim Jesse Lewis nearly $50 million in a case that wrapped in Texas in August.

Throughout the nearly one-month trial in Waterbury, Connecticut, the more than a dozen plaintiffs in the case took the stand and testified about how hoax believers harassed them for years online and even stalked their homes.

Jones lost the case by default last year when he refused to turn over financial documents about his company, Infowars. In doing so, he also lost the ability to argue in court his belief that his comments about Sandy Hook were First Amendment-protected free speech.

Jones' attorney, Norm Pattis, did not immediately return Insider's request for comment on Thursday. Pattis did however appear on Infowars shortly after the punitive damages award was announced.

"These cases are about making an example of you and shutting you up, piling you up with a judgment debt," Pattis told Jones on Infowars. "They'd like to put you on a financial leash in an attempt to silence you."

But Pattis said he hopes that doesn't happen.

"I hope for the sake of the American people you don't let that happen," Pattis told Jones.

Jones rose from a local Austin shock jock to a nationally-recognized figure largely during the 2016 election, when he hosted then-presidential candidate Donald Trump on his show.

From his earliest days in broadcasting, Jones has been spreading conspiracy theories, but his audience started getting much larger around the time he began pushing lies about Sandy Hook.

In more recent years, Jones has grown his empire by advertising supplements, survivalist gear, and patriotic memorabilia to his fans.

At the first Sandy Hook trial held in Texas this summer, a financial expert testified about how he estimates Jones and Free Speech Systems, Infowars' parent company, to be worth a combined $135 million to $270 million.

Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy shortly before the first Sandy Hook trial kicked off. A third Sandy Hook trial, also back in Texas, is supposed to commence in the coming months.