Ghislaine Maxwell arrested: How Jeffrey Epstein’s ex-girlfriend ‘groomed underage girls to satisfy paedo former lover’
GHISLAINE Maxwell has long been at the centre of the long-running probe into the warped lifestyle of Jeffrey Epstein.
She has been accused of grooming dozens of young girls to satisfy the twisted fantasies of her wealthy ex boyfriend.
The British socialite – dubbed Epstein’s ‘madam’ – is now back in the headlines amid reports she has been arrested by the FBI in New Hampshire.
Federal officers took her into custody this morning and she is due to appear in court later, NBC News reports.
Her attorneys have relentlessly fought away allegations she was involved in Epstein’s abuse of dozens of young girls for years by denying them in civil lawsuits.
She, however, has not been seen and has made no public comment about the high-profile scandal or about Epstein’s prison suicide last August.
Charges against Ghislaine Maxwell:
- Count one: Conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts
- Count two: Enticement of a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts
- Count three: Conspiracy to transport minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity
- Count four: Transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity
- Count five and six: Perjury – the offence of willfully telling an untruth or making a misrepresentation under oath.
The FBI has long wanted to quiz Maxwell over her links to Epstein, whose vile crimes were detailed in the recent Netflix documentary Filthy Rich.
Dozens of women claim Maxwell recruited them when they were underage or very young to act as sexual servants for Epstein.
Those accusations, until now, have never resulted in criminal charges and she has always strongly denied any wrongdoing.
It is claimed she also introduced Prince Andrew to US “sex slave” Virginia Roberts, now known as Virginia Giuffre.
She first vanished when prosecutors began re-examining hundreds of criminal complaints against her former boyfriend Epstein in the autumn of 2016.
The Sun had offered a £10,000 reward to anyone who could provide information which directly resulted in us successfully making contact with her in person.
Lawyers for Epstein’s victims hired private investigators to try to find her and issued writs at a number of addresses worldwide, without success.
Ghislaine is the youngest child of disgraced media tycoon and British publisher Robert Maxwell.
She moved to New York in 1991 after her father’s death and reportedly socialised with Ivana Trump.
In 1992 she had a romantic relationship with financier Epstein and remained closely associated with him for decades afterwards.
In a 2015 statement, Maxwell rejected allegations that she has acted as a procurer for Epstein.
Her spokesperson said “the allegations made against Ghislaine Maxwell are untrue” and she “strongly denies allegations of an unsavoury nature, which have appeared in the British press and elsewhere, and reserves her right to seek redress at the repetition of such old defamatory claims”.
Spencer Kuvin, who represents three of the dead paedophile’s accusers, previously told Sun Online he believed that the FBI was building a strong case against the Brit socialite before they arrest her.
“There’s only two possible places where she might be and that’s England – or the UK somewhere – or in the States,” the Florida-based attorney told Sun Online at the time.
“I think those places are where she feels most comfortable and even someone who is on the run or someone who might have concerns of prosecution, they’re going to go where they feel safest.”
The 57-year-old has been accused of acting as a “madam” for Jeffrey Epstein, US court documents revealed.
Almost 2,000 pages of a lawsuit were released in a defamation case involving Virginia Giuffre (then Roberts), who in 2015 claimed Prince Andrew slept with her three times.
The first encounter allegedly took place in Maxwell’s London home when Virginia was 17.
Ms Giuffre alleges she was recruited by Maxwell in 1999 where she was introduced to Epstein.
Another document describes an alleged sexual encounter between Ms Giuffre, now 35, and Andrew in a bathtub.
It was raised by lawyers for Maxwell in an effort to show the former masseuse had not mentioned it before 2014 and was lying about it.
The document says the tub was “too small for a man of Prince Andrew’s size to enjoy a bath in let alone sex”.
The prince has always strenuously denied any wrongdoing.
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In April, Epstein accuser Maria Farmer, now 50, filed a sworn affidavit alleging she and her 15-year-old sister were sexually abused by Epstein and Maxwell in 1996.
She claimed Maxwell acted as a “madam”, driving around New York plucking young women off the streets, supposedly to become models, only to take them to be abused by Epstein and his pals.
The FBI raided Epstein’s £60million New York mansion and arrested him on July 6 last year, then on August 10 he was found hanged in his cell in an apparent suicide while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.