In the first arrest since sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s mysterious suicide, his alleged longtime facilitator Ghislaine Maxwell is in FBI custody and expected to be charged by federal authorities Thursday.
According to reports, Maxwell was taken into custody in New Hampshire.
Maxwell is suspected of grooming teen girls and making them available for sex with Epstein and his powerful friends, including former President Bill Clinton.
Maxwell was a close friend of the Clinton family. She was one of the few people invited to Chelsea Clinton’s wedding in 2010.
It is the first arrest following the death of Epstein in a Lower Manhattan jail last July.
Called Epstein’s madam, Maxwell allegedly recruited girls for his and his friends’ sexual appetites. She was also, at times, his social planner and household organizer in places ranging from New York to Palm Beach, Florida.
Maxwell is the daughter of a British publishing magnate who died under mysterious circumstances, and remains one of the most prominent figures left from the Epstein orbit after his death while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Maxwell, 57, has remained an elusive character whose father, publisher Robert Maxwell, died in 1991 after falling off his yacht near the Canary Islands. It turned out that he had illegally looted pension funds from his businesses, according to news accounts at the time.
The name of that yacht: Lady Ghislaine.
A Robert Maxwell biographer, Tom Bower, says Ghislaine Maxwell was the youngest of his children and a favorite of her father — hence, the yacht’s name.
“I think in his home, she never really learned the difference between right and wrong,” Bower told National Public Radio last year. “And the other tragedy for her was that she was dominated by him, and she learned from him to worship wealth and money and power and influence and really had very little sentiment for what might be called the little people.”
Eventually, Maxwell landed in Epstein’s world in the wealthy enclave of Palm Beach and bought a home in Manhattan, where Epstein also had an opulent mansion worth as much as $77 million. According to lawsuits filed by Epstein accusers, she became a recruiter of young girls for Epstein, as well as his household manager and social circuit organizer.
In Florida, Epstein pleaded guilty to prostitution-related charges with minors in 2008 and served 13 months in jail, where he was allowed out on work release almost every day. At the time, his lawyers reached a non-prosecution agreement with the Justice Department that spared him a potential life prison sentence if convicted on federal charges.
It was after The Miami Herald published stories last year that New York prosecutors took up the case and won an indictment against Epstein, 66, for trafficking in minors, carrying a potential 45-year prison sentence. While that was pending, Epstein suddenly died under mysterious circumstances while in jail.
Juan Alessi, who managed Epstein’s home in Palm Beach for years, said in a deposition that Maxwell was essentially the lady of the house.
“She would tell me, I am going to take care of the house,” Alessi said in the deposition, adding later that he drove Maxwell to spas around South Florida to look for young women who could do “massages” for Epstein — their code for sexual acts.
“I remember one occasion or two occasions she would say to me, ‘Juan, give me a list of all the spas in Palm Beach County,’” Alessi said. “And I will drive her from one to the other one.”
In one of the lawsuits, Virginia Roberts Guiffre laid out in detail what was believed to be Maxwell’s role in Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking ring, which other women have echoed in similar claims. Guiffre, 15 at the time, said she was approached by Maxwell about a way to earn good money: learn massage therapy and get to know Epstein as a man who could give her a bright future.
Giuffre says in a sworn affidavit that she was trained by Maxwell and Epstein to become “everything a man wanted me to be” and that she was flown on Epstein’s private planes to his properties in New Mexico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Paris, and New York. Guiffre also says Maxwell arranged meetings for sex in London and elsewhere with Britain’s Prince Andrew.
“Ghislaine Maxwell was heavily involved in the illegal sex. I understood her to be a very powerful person,” Guiffre said in the affidavit. “She used Epstein’s money and he used her name and connections to gain power and prestige.”
At the time, Maxwell vehemently denied claims by Guiffre and the others in court documents. “The allegations made against me are abhorrent and entirely untrue and I ask that they stop,” she said in a 2011 news release.
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The Associated Press contributed to this article