Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime associate of disgraced money manager Jeffrey Epstein, was arrested and charged with conspiracy and enticing minors to engage in sex.
Maxwell was arrested this morning in New Hampshire, FBI spokeswoman Adrienne Senatore said. Prosecutors have scheduled a midday press conference in New York.
The charges against Maxwell, in a six-count indictment, come almost a year after Epstein was arrested by FBI agents on July 6, 2019 after his private plane landed at a New Jersey airport. Epstein killed himself in a federal jail in August.
The new case signals that prosecutors are aggressively pushing ahead with the investigation into allegations that others helped Epstein abuse underage girls. Maxwell, the daughter of the late British publisher Robert Maxwell, was close to Epstein for years. She has long denied that she was involved in Epstein’s actions.
Maxwell is accused of scheming with Epstein from 1994 to at least 1997 to entice minor girls to be sexually abused by him, according to the indictment. The victims, described by the U.S. as “multiple minor girls,” were as young as 14 years old when Maxwell allegedly selected and “groomed” them to be abused by Epstein by luring them to Epstein’s various homes, including in Manhattan and Palm Beach, the U.S. says.
Maxwell was not only paid by Epstein to manage his properties but was also involved in an intimate sexual relationship with him, the U.S. said.
Maxwell is charged with two counts of conspiracy, perjury, enticing minors to engage in sex, and transporting a minor to engage in criminal activity.
One of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Giuffre, has claimed Epstein sexually abused her for two years starting in 2000, when she was 16, and that Maxwell recruited her while she was working at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
A federal appeals court in August unsealed hundreds of pages of long-awaited documents from Giuffre’s defamation lawsuit against Maxwell, revealing details about the alleged abuse.
This story was provided by Bloomberg News.