Ghislaine Maxwell attends a reception for the Oxford Pershing Square Graduate Scholarships held at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, on Sept. 22, 2013. Photo: Amanda Gordon/Bloomberg

Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime friend and close confidante of Jeffrey Epstein, was arrested Thursday in New Hampshire and charged in Manhattan federal court with helping the deceased financier run an underage sex trafficking ring that stretched from New York to London.

In an unsealed indictment signed by acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York accused Maxwell, formerly a prominent British socialite, of befriending girls as young as 14 to engage in illegal sex acts with Epstein and then lying under oath about her involvement.

According to the indictment, Maxwell "enticed and groomed" the girls for the illicit sexual encounters by taking them shopping or to the movies. Maxwell, prosecutors said, also discussed sexual topics with the girls and sometimes undressed in front of them in order to "normalize" the abuse.

She also participated in some of the encounters, which included the girls performing topless massages on Epstein and touching him while he masturbated, prosecutors alleged.

"Maxwell's presence during the minor victims' interactions with Epstein, including interactions where the minor victim was undressed or that involved sex acts with Epstein, helped put the victims at ease because an adult woman was present," the 18-page indictment said.

Maxwell, who was born in France and raised in the United Kingdom, was arrested Thursday morning in Bradford, New Hampshire, by the agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in conjunction with the New York Police Department. She was expected to appear in New Hampshire federal court later Thursday.

Almost immediately, prosecutors pushed to detain Maxwell before trial, arguing that her significant financial resources, and the possibility of decades in prison, made her an "extreme" risk to flee the country.

"In short, Maxwell has three passports, large sums of money, extensive international connections, and absolutely no reason to stay in the United States and face the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence," they said in a 10-page detention memo.

Epstein, who was charged last July with running a sprawling sex trafficking operation for years, killed himself in Manhattan federal jail while awaiting trial in the Southern District of New York. Authorities, however, have continued to probe his former employees, associates and prominent public figures in an ongoing investigation that has included the public corruption unit of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office.

Civil lawsuits have long linked Maxwell to Epstein's abuses, and prosecutors were said to be investigating her involvement since his death last summer. According to the indictment, Maxwell had helped to manage Epstein's multiple properties in Manhattan, Palm Beach, Florida and New Mexico, but the two were said to have developed an intimate personal and sexual relationship.

According to the indictment, Maxwell was key to convincing girls to accept Epstein's offers of financial assistance, which he leveraged for loyalty and sex acts.

"Maxwell, the defendant, facilitated Jeffrey Epstein's access to minor victims knowing that he had a sexual preference for underage girls and that he intended to engage in sexual activity with those victims," the indictment said. "Epstein's resulting abuse of minor victims included, among other things, touching a victim's breast, touching a victim's genitals, placing a sex toy such as a vibrator on a victim's genitals, directing a victim to touch Epstein while he masturbated, and directing a victim to touch Epstein's genitals."

The abuses outlined in the indictment involved three unnamed victims and occurred between 1994 and 1997. The encounters occurred in New York, Florida, New Mexico and at Maxwell's home in London.

She was also charged with lying twice in 2016 during a deposition for a civil lawsuit in Manhattan federal court. According to the indictment, Maxwell falsely asserted under oath that she had no knowledge of Epstein's abuses and denied any involvement with the illegal acts.

"Maxwell lied because the truth, as alleged, was almost unspeakable," Strauss said at a press conference announcing the charges. "Maxwell enticed minor girls, got them to trust her and then delivered them into the trap that she and Epstein had set for them. She pretended to be a woman they could trust, all the while she was setting them up to be sexually abused by Epstein and, in some cases, by Maxwell herself."

She is charged with two counts of conspiracy, enticement of a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, transporting minors for illegal sex acts and two counts of perjury.

William F. Sweeney Jr., the assistant director in charge of the FBI's field office in New York, said that authorities had been "discreetly keeping tabs" on Maxwell and that she recently "slithered away to a gorgeous property in New Hampshire, continuing to live a life of privilege while her victims live with the trauma inflicted upon them years ago.

Maxwell was taken into custody without incident Thursday morning, he said.

According to government's detention filing, Maxwell had more than 15 bank accounts that held anywhere from "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to upwards of $20 million since 2016. She had also "reaped substantial income" from the 2016 sale of a home in New York City and had "effectively been hiding for approximately a year" at a 156-acre home in Bradford, which she had acquired in an all-cash purchase through a "carefully anonymized LLC."

Taking questions from reporters, Strauss said that prosecutors would be seeking detention prior to trial and had been in touch with the Federal Bureau of Prisons regarding Maxwell's arrest.

The charged conduct in Thursday's unsealed indictment covered the years 1994 to 1997, considered the early days of Epstein's alleged sex-trafficking ring. Prior to his death last August, Epstein faced charges of allegedly trafficking underage girls for sex from 2002 to 2005.

Strauss on Thursday declined to comment on the intervening years in the two cases, saying they were "beyond the four corners of the indictment."

The federal investigation remains ongoing.

 

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