The private messages and photos that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos sent to his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez may have been leaked to the press by Sanchez’s brother Michael. The Wall Street Journal reports that federal prosecutors have found evidence of this.

Sanchez allegedly gave the messages to her brother, whom she would then have sold for 200,000 dollars (more than 180,000 euros) to the American gossip magazine The National Enquirer.

Michael Sanchez has denied this allegation in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.

In January 2019, The National Enquirer published private messages and photos from Bezos, showing that he was having an affair with Sanchez. Bezos and his now ex-wife divorced not much later. The Amazon founder subsequently accused American Media Inc., the publisher of The National Enquirer, of blackmail. American Media Inc. denies this allegation.

The case is currently being investigated by the federal prosecutors.

Earlier this week, based on sources, The Guardian reported that the Bezos phone would have been hacked in May 2018, after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman sent him a WhatsApp message from his personal phone.

The crown prince allegedly sent Bezos a video file via WhatsApp, after which large amounts of data were pulled from the phone of the richest man in the world within hours.

After a digital analysis and conversations with anonymous sources, the British newspaper concludes that it is very likely that Bin Salman intentionally sent the file. The Guardian does not know the content of the messages that were taken from the phone.

It is not clear whether the Saudi hack of Bezos’ phone is related to the private messages printed in The National Enquirer. Publisher American Media Inc. denies having obtained the photos through a Saudi source.

The Saudi embassy in the United States calls the accusation “absurd” and calls for an investigation into the facts.