Amazon slime pay
Bro of Bezos babe ‘got 200G’ for racy pix
The brother of Jeff Bezos’ former mistress sold the billionaire’s risqué text messages and selfies to the National Enquirer for hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2019, according to a report Wednesday.
Michael Sanchez, the sibling of the Amazon founder’s lover — former Fox News anchor Lauren Sanchez — was paid $200,000 by the publication’s parent company, American Media LLC, for the texts and images, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.
Michael, a talent agent who has managed television pundits, had been a source for the Enquirer and its top editor, Dylan Howard, for years before selling the photos, according to the Journal.
Unlike most sources, who are paid by the firm for photos upon publication, the contract with Sanchez required that he be paid upfront, regardless
of whether any story ran, the WSJ reported.
The firm’s general counsel also added an unusual provision into the Oct. 26 contract with Michael to make it clear the deal wasn’t a “catch and kill” to prevent the information from being revealed, according to the report.
Publisher David Pecker approved the $200,000 deal — more than the company normally pays its sources — at a time when the company was strained financially, according to the WSJ report.
The deal sparked a feud between the tabloid and Bezos — at the time the world’s richest man — along with internal fights at American Media, the report said.
In one case, Pecker and the firm’s general counsel had a blow-up over the unusual contract before the Enquirer published the story in January 2019, when Bezos was still married to MacKenzie Scott, according to the WSJ.
Before the story ran, the Enquirer asked Bezos for comment on Jan. 7, prompting him to announce two days later that he and Scott were divorcing after more than two decades of marriage.
When the story ran, the print edition proclaimed, “BEZOS’ DIVORCE! THE CHEATING PHOTOS THAT ENDED HIS MARRIAGE” and featured pictures of Bezos and Lauren Sanchez together with steamy text-message quotes.
Bezos soon accused Pecker of blackmail and politically motivated extortion.