In the latest update to the saga dating back to January 2019, a new report alleges that the person behind the leaked nude photos sent between Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, was Sanchez’s brother.
Michael Sanchez reportedly received $200,000 for providing the intimates texts and pictures to the National Enquirer and giving the tabloid’s publisher exclusive rights, according to The New York Times. The story goes on to indicate that Lauren Sanchez, a former TV news anchor,
actually provided her brother with the content.
The National Enquirer broke the news of the relationship between Sanchez and Bezos in January 2019, hours after the Amazon CEO announced he and his wife, Mackenzie, were planning on getting a divorce. The investigation by Bezos and his security team to discover who’s behind
the leak has been ongoing, and Sanchez was an early suspect — although he repeatedly denied the allegations in exchanges with Business Insider.
However, the leak investigation also dug up an unexpected plot twist. Last week, The Guardian reported that Bezos’ phone had allegedly been hacked back in May 2018 — eight months before the National Enquirer story — likely via a file sent by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman on WhatsApp. The Guardian report, backed by UN investigators, does not indicate Saudi Arabia is responsible for leaking the personal messages sent between Sanchez and Bezos, although Bezos previously floated the idea of a link to the Saudi government before.
Check out the complete timeline of events, tracing back to when Jeff Bezos first announced he was getting a divorce in January 2019:
On January 9, 2019, Jeff Bezos announced that he and his wife, MacKenzie, were seeking a divorce. The couple said in a statement: “As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared
lives as friends.”
The couple first met when working at the the investment management firm D.E. Shaw & Co., before Jeff Bezos even founded Amazon. They were married for 25 years, and have four kids together.
News of the divorce raised questions about its impact on the net worth of Jeff Bezos, the richest person in the world. In the end, after the divorce was settled, Jeff Bezos kept his spot as world’s richest and MacKenzie Bezos was awarded a 4% stake in Amazon valued at $35 billion.
MacKenzie gave her ex-husband voting control over her stake, and as well as her interests in the Washington Post and Blue Origin.
In response to a question about the Bezos divorce, Donald Trump told reporters he wished the Amazon CEO good luck, and said the divorce was “going to be a beauty.” He later took to Twitter to gift Jeff Bezos with a new nickname: “Jeff Bozo.”
Trump has historically been highly critical of Bezos, Amazon, and the Washington Post. On Twitter, Trump also took aim at the Bezos-owned “lobbyist newspaper.”
Hours after news of the Bezos divorce broke, the National Enquirer reported that Jeff Bezos has been dating a former TV host named Lauren Sanchez — and said that it had conducted a 4-month-long investigation into the affair.
