‘I’m going to air everyone’s dirty laundry – bring it on!’

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos is heading for a sensational court showdown with his fiancee’s brother over some very intimate pictures. And even worse for the world’s richest man, his opponent is telling friends ...

WHILE millions have been laid off and we teeter on the brink of a global recession, one man is peering down from the summit of the biggest pile of money the world has ever seen. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos was already the richest man on the planet before the coronavirus pandemic locked us in our homes and forced us into the arms of the internet. Soon he could become the first trillionaire in history.

Amazon’s share price has soared nearly 30 per cent this year, increasing Bezos’s personal fortune to $150billion (£118billion) as demand for his online shopping, streaming and delivery services boom. And experts say that wealth of $1trillion – a thousand billion – is within reach by 2026, so rapidly is his fortune increasing.

It is not just Amazon that is in great shape. Bezos, himself, has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent months, from self-professed nerd to a Hollywood ‘player’.

He’s barely recognisable, in fact. Since ditching MacKenzie, his wife of 26 years and paying her a record $38billion divorce settlement last June (instantly making her the third-richest woman on the planet), the emperor of online shopping has undergone a complete overhaul.

The balding pate with its wispy strands of hair has been shaved and buffed to a glossy bronze sheen. Hours with a personal trainer have left him with bulging biceps and a sixpack. Gone is the ‘geek uniform’ of trainers and baggy chinos, replaced by a slick designer wardrobe and Gucci loafers.

Bezos once admitted: ‘I’m not the kind of person women fall in love with. I sort of grow on them, like fungus.’ But that was before he became a billionaire with all the trappings, including a $165million Hollywood mansion, an $80million New York ‘mega-home’, a $40million Washington DC mansion and a $65million Gulfstream jet.

A friend to stars including Jennifer Lopez, Katy Perry and Barbra Streisand, Bezos is reportedly building the world’s biggest ‘mega-yacht’. A second, smaller vessel will float alongside just to house his collection of helicopters.

Naturally enough for a man of his stature, he owns a private space company called Blue Origin with the goal of making space travel an everyday reality. You could fairly say that Bezos’s ambitions are stratospheric – and beyond.

SO IT must be all the more unsettling to find himself drawn into an unedifying family drama and a legal case that threatens to bring Bezos right back down to earth, along with his glamorous new fiancee, TV host Lauren Sanchez. And the key evidence on which he might well have to testify? A set of embarrassing photographs of the billionaire’s private parts that were allegedly ‘stolen’ from Lauren’s phone.

Indeed, Bezos’s life has become a melodrama far more salacious than anything a Hollywood scriptwriter could dream up, mixing family betrayal with international intrigue involving Donald Trump and Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince of Saudi Arabia.

The case, which is gripping America, is as labyrinthine as its detail is compelling. First, Bezos sensationally claimed the notorious US tabloid the National Enquirer threatened to ‘blackmail’ him with the below-the-belt selfies.

Then it was suggested, that the pictures had been sold to the magazine for up to $200,000 by the brother of his own fiancee, Michael, Sanchez, who had been entrusted with handling Lauren’s personal media strategy. It is a charge that Michael denies so vehemently that he is now suing the richest man in the world for defamation.

Last night he broke a self-imposed vow of silence to tell The Mail on Sunday: ‘I have protected and supported my sister 100 per cent since the day she was born. And I’ve willingly taken the fall for her too many times to count. What’s different this time is our family has been ripped apart and Lauren doesn’t seem to care.’

Michael accuses 56-year-old Bezos and his security consultant Gavin de Becker (now reportedly guarding Meghan and Harry in Los Angeles) of defaming him by falsely telling journalists that he was responsible for leaking the graphic photographs.

In Michael’s version of events, Federal investigators found he had no case to answer. ‘Once the FBI and Amazon’s own investigators cleared me of ever possessing the pictures used to blackmail Jeff, I thought I’d get a private apology, at a minimum. But Jeff and Lauren haven’t looked back,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thrown under the bus. Sadly, it’s likely the next time I see them will be in court.’

Perhaps it is no surprise that Bezos and his security consultant take a different view, saying in their legal defence – as if things weren’t complicated enough – that they never accused Michael Sanchez of leaking the naked pictures in the first place.

‘Mr Sanchez cannot prevail,’ say the court papers filed by Bezos and de Becker. ‘Multiple sources cited in the complaint and by the media over many months show that Mr Sanchez leaked personal information and materials, including private text messages and photos, to the Enquirer... neither defendant has ever accused Mr. Sanchez of leaking nude photos specifically.’

Michael says the ongoing lawsuit prevents him from speaking further, but he has told friends that he is determined to have his reputation cleared in the most public manner possible.

‘Michael wants a front-page apology in The Washington Post, the newspaper Jeff owns,’ a source said last night. ‘He’s lost his reputation, his business and his sister over this whole debacle. Michael always did what was best for Lauren but he feels totally betrayed.

‘He’s determined to have his day in court and it’s not going to be pretty for the richest man in the world. Michael will air everyone’s dirty laundry. Bring it on!’

The romance between Bezos and Lauren Sanchez resulted in a flood of global headlines in January 2019, when it was revealed the billionaire had left his wife and Lauren had ditched her husband, powerful Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell.

Until that point, Bezos had seemed content to live a quiet life in Seattle with wife MacKenzie and their four children. But it has been suggested that, as his wealth grew, so did his love of ‘the heady world of celebrity’ and the geeky dad ‘turned Hollywood’. ‘Jeff loves everything about LaLaLand; the parties, the glitz, the glamour,’ said a source who knows the couple.

‘When he’s in a room with stars, he’s so happy. He’s like the nerd who has finally hit the jackpot and been invited to party with the beautiful people. He has the money and Lauren has the connections.

She was a minor celebrity in her own right as a D-list TV presenter in LA but through her husband Patrick, who is one of the most powerful agents in town, she knows everyone who is anyone.

‘For Lauren the attraction wasn’t money. She was already wealthy. It was power. And for Jeff she represented an entree into the world of glamour and showbusiness. But the truth is theirs is a real love story. They are crazy about each other.

Jeff seduced his new lover in a humble pick-up truck