Jeff Bezos’ Ex-Wife Tied to Financial Controversy as Associated Party Addresses ‘Accounting Misstatements’
Ever since Mackenzie Scott divorced Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Scott has been focusing on her philanthropic endeavors. While Bezos went on to marry journalist Lauren Sánchez and focus on Blue Origin and other new businesses, Scott has been publicly open about her desire to donate most of the money she got in the divorce to charitable endeavors during her lifetime.
In fact, Scott donated more than $7 billion to nonprofit groups in 2025, which brings her total to a staggering $26 billion since 2020. And yes, that’s billions with a b. These days, if you think of philanthropy, Mackenzie Scott’s name is near the top. Most of Scott’s donations focused on DEI, disaster recovery, and higher education.
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Of course, Scott has very little control over the money once it’s donated, which is why we get stories like the one out of Santa Barbara City College. The Santa Barbara City College Foundation recently disclosed the unauthorized use of millions of dollars originally gifted to the college by Scott in 2021. In a statement, SBCC Foundation CEO Bobbi Abram said that a part of Scott’s $20 million gift was used for the Promise program without the required approval of the SBCC Board of Trustees, with $13 million of the original amount remaining.
The Promise program covers tuition and supplies for all local high school graduates for up to two years. Scott’s donation to SBCC and the SBCC Foundation was the largest single donation in the school’s history.
The statement says the discovery came after an internal review found “legacy accounting misstatements,” and that the SBCC Foundation leadership and the college’s Board of Trustees believed “other sources were funding the program,” which is why they had not intervened before. Board President Jonathan Abboud also released a statement saying the board was “disappointed to learn that the MacKenzie Scott funds were used without explicit authorization by either the SBCC Foundation board or the college.”
“SBCC is nevertheless grateful to the SBCC Foundation’s current leadership and staff for identifying the past unauthorized activity and initiating a comprehensive review of the SBCC Foundation’s past accounting practices and swiftly improving internal controls,” Abboud said. “The SBCC Board will continue to work collaboratively with the SBCC Foundation to address this matter appropriately and ensure full transparency and accountability for the use of the gift funds.”
In December of last year, Scott published an essay on her website discussing her 2025 charitable contributions. “This dollar total will likely be reported in the news, but any dollar amount is a vanishingly tiny fraction of the personal expressions of care being shared into communities this year.” She donated $2.6 billion in 2024 and $2.1 billion in 2023.
Despite Scott’s donations, her net worth is still reported to be around $40 billion, according to Forbes. Considering her pledge, that means we can expect the donations to continue for the foreseeable future. Her ex-husband Bezos, who still owns around 9% of the company he founded in 1994, has a reported net worth is $230.2 billion.
