Jeff Bezos paid more than $16,000 in parking tickets while renovating his DC mansion
Jeff Bezos paid a small fortune in parking fines as part of the ongoing renovation of his $23 million, Washington, DC mansion. A team of Bezos-employed contractors, who converted his home from a museum into a residence, racked up more $16,840 in parking tickets while working on the property, according to news organization WUSA9.
Bezos reportedly paid $23 million for the property, with plans to spend $12 million to renovate it. The news team obtained records from the DC Department of Public Works and found that the city handed out 564 citations in the 2200 and 2300 blocks of S Street, where Bezos’ property is located. The tickets were accumulated between October 2016, when Bezos bought the home, and October 2019, when work slowed down. After expanding the scope of the streets, WUSA9 says the ticket total reached $18,000.
The Department of Motor Vehicles also apparently tracked more than $5,600 in unpaid tickets, going back years. A source told WUSA9 that all the tickets had been paid, however.
The tickets mostly came from ignored “no parking” signs, parking in spots reserved for residents, or blocking crosswalks and obstructing pedestrians’ paths. WUSA9 admits that it can’t connect every parking ticket to Bezos because contractors were required to sign nondisclosure agreements, but an anonymous source told the news channel that one general contractor set up “off-site parking and shuttles to and from the site” just to bring people to work on Bezos’ mansion and to avoid the parking nightmare. Work on the home appears to have been mostly finished as it was opened up for an after-party for the Alfalfa Club, an invite-only social club. Bill Gates, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and actor Ben Stiller all reportedly attended the party; it’s unclear where they parked.
Bezos is the richest man alive, with a net worth estimated to be around $129.5 billion. Last week, after Amazon’s earnings report, he added $13.2 billion to his worth in about 15 minutes thanks to a stock push. Amazon also paid $0 in federal taxes in 2018, although the parking tickets go toward the local Washington, DC government.
Jeff Bezos paid a small fortune in parking fines as part of the ongoing renovation of his $23 million, Washington, DC mansion. A team of Bezos-employed contractors, who converted his home from a museum into a residence, racked up more $16,840 in parking tickets while working on the property, according…
