Amazon CEO and World’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, is reportedly engaged to his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez, her brother has claimed in a lawsuit.
Hollywood talent manager, Michael Sanchez is currently suing Bezos and his security consultant Gavin de Becker for defamation.
On Friday, Sanchez’s brother, Michael Sanchez, filed a defamation lawsuit that claimed Bezos and his security consultant, Gavin de Becker, falsely told journalists he was the one who had provided Bezos’ and Lauren Sanchez’s nude photos to the National Enquirer in 2018.
In the defamation lawsuit, he filed in Los Angeles, Michael also referred to Bezos as his sister’s ‘current fiance’ and described his sister as Bezos’ fiancee.
According to Mail Online, the lawsuit contains several allegations about Bezos and his girlfriend, including that their relationship started before previously implied and that Lauren had a role in leaking the couple’s texts and photos.
‘While Mr de Becker’s initial asserted theory was that Mr. Sanchez had sold out his sister for $200,000, Mr de Becker soon realized this theory would not hold up because, among other reasons, it was inconceivable that Mr. Sanchez would ruin his relationship with his sister and her current fiance, the richest man in the world, for financial gain,’ the court documents state.
The engagement claims comes a month after Lauren was spotted wearing a massive diamond ring on her right hand as she vacationed with Bezos over the holidays in St. Barts in December 2019.
It was also claimmed in the suit that the Michael Sanchez even helped in “covering up” the romance between the pair, who have since divorced their spouses for their relationship “This included developing and publicizing false narratives (e.g., “they met while working on a documentary” and “both families dealt with this last year,” despite the fact that their spouses had been blindsided by the affair and, as of January 7, 2019, the couple’s children were not aware of the affair),” the suit says.
“However, pictures of Ms. Sanchez and Mr. Bezos at a July 2018 Blue Origin event, where Ms. Sanchez was standing closer to Mr. Bezos than professionally permissible, eventually surfaced, and news outlets began to ask questions.”
Sanchez admits in his complaint to working with the Enquirer, but said he was just trying to “get ahead of the story.” The suit alleges that he worked to hide Lauren’s secrets: “He used his experience and relationships to kill true and false stories about Ms. Sanchez’s business and personal affairs — some of which had the potential to destroy Ms. Sanchez’s career and all of which have remained private to this day.”
It also claims that, in October 2018, Lauren asked her brother to leak the information about the affair to TMZ, but he talked her out of it. Interestingly, the suit says that Sanchez did not sell any photos, as he “stood to make tens of millions of dollars by protecting Ms. Sanchez and Mr. Bezos’ secrets, particularly since Mr. Sanchez was already promised the production of his film franchise and a lucrative finder’s fee, among other things.”
Michael Sanchez says he suffered “humiliation and harassment” as a result of Bezos’ allegations, which led the FBI to raid his house in view of his neighbors, according to his complaint.
Earlier this week, Bezos filed a motion accusing Michael Sanchez of extortion via the defamation suit. He called Sanchez’s claims baseless and argued that they marked an attempt to suppress his free-speech rights while citing a California law that allows defamation lawsuits to be dismissed in their early stages.
“Mr. Sanchez is now bringing this action to gain money from Mr. Bezos, the very person whose information he sold to the National Enquirer,” Bezos argued in his filing. “Mr. Sanchez claims he is doing so because he is now unhappy about news coverage concerning the media maelstrom that he helped cause, after receiving the $200,000 and betraying his sister.”
Bezos and Sanchez confirmed their relationship in January 2019 when National Enquirer broke the news after the Amazon CEO and his wife, MacKenzie, announced they were getting a divorce after 25 years of marriage. Since then, both Bezos and Sanchez have finalized their respective divorces to make way for their relationship.
