Maxwell won’t tell FBI name of her ‘secret husband’, court told
Socialite held on child sex trafficking charges allegedly withheld name of ‘spouse’ to investigators
‘The defendant makes no mention whatsoever about the financial circumstances or assets of her spouse’
GHISLAINE MAXWELL has secretly married but refused to disclose her husband’s identity to FBI investigators, it was claimed in court.
Federal prosecutors told a judge hearing Ms Maxwell’s application for bail that she had a spouse, although his name has been withheld.
The existence of a husband might explain why Ms Maxwell chose to remain in the US while being hunted by the FBI over child sex trafficking allegations rather than fleeing abroad.
Last year, she was romantically linked to Scott Borgerson, the chief executive of a tech company based in Boston, but there is no suggestion or evidence that the couple ever married. Mr Borgerson has insisted the pair were only friends.
Ms Maxwell used the alias “Jen Marshall” when inspecting the house she bought while in hiding from the FBI and was accompanied by a man she identified as her husband and who used the name “Scott Marshall”. But while “Scott Marshall” spoke with a British accent, Mr Borgerson was born in the US and speaks with an American accent.
The disclosure that Ms Maxwell is married appears to have been made deliberately by prosecutors to bolster their legal argument that she has held back information about both her social circumstances and her finances.
Ms Maxwell’s bail application was rejected and she now faces the prospect of 12 months in prison while awaiting trial in July next year on charges of child sex trafficking and grooming for Jeffrey Epstein, her former boyfriend who killed himself in a jail cell. Ms Maxwell, a close friend of the Duke of York and the daughter of Robert Maxwell, the disgraced tycoon, has denied all charges, including two further counts of perjury.
Alison Moe, prosecuting, told the judge during bail arguments in a New York courthouse late on Tuesday that Ms Maxwell was not identifying to court officials who was proposing to put up $5million (£4million) bail, or even if they lived in the US. Ms Moe added: “In addition to failing to describe in any way the assets of the proposed co-signer of a bond, the defendant also makes no mention whatsoever about the financial circumstances or assets of her spouse, whose identity she declined to provide to pre-trial services.
“There’s no information about who will be co-signing this bond or their assets, and no details whatsoever.”
Speculation will now be rife as to the identity of her spouse. There have been no previous suggestions that Ms Maxwell was married and a former associate in the UK said it would be a huge surprise. “She never told anyone she was married. We always thought she would remain single,” the associate added.
According to the court hearing, Ms Maxwell used the alias “Jen Marshall” and posed as a journalist when viewing a hideaway in Bradford, New Hampshire, which she bought through a company, registered in Boston, for £800,000 in November last year.
She was arrested at the house – called Tuckedaway – earlier this month in a morning raid by FBI agents and police. Estate agents said that during the viewing she was accompanied by a man with a British accent who used the pseudonym “Scott Marshall”.
Scott Marshall claimed he was retired from the British military and was a writer looking for privacy. Ms Moe, in her statement to court, referred to Ms Maxwell’s alias as both “Jen” and “Janet”, adding further confusion. On Tuesday, Alison Nathan, the New York district judge, deemed Ms Maxwell, 58, a flight risk, ordered that she be held without bail and set a trial date of July 12 next year.
‘She never told anyone she was married. We always thought she would remain single’
Prosecutors have said they want to interview the Duke of York as a witness over his relationship with both Ms Maxwell and Epstein, who killed himself while awaiting trial last year. Ms Maxwell had reportedly been seeing Mr Borgerson, the millionaire CEO of Cargometrics, a Boston-based data-analytics company.
The British socialite was reported last year to have been staying in Mr Borgerson’s $3 million, ocean-front home in Manchester-by-the-sea, Massachusetts. At the time he denied any relationship, saying they were just friends. Mr Borgerson, 44, a divorced father-of-two who had previously served as an officer in the US Coast Guard, is believed to have met Ms Maxwell in 2015 through speaking engagements connected to ocean preservation. They both were pictured speaking at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik in 2014. Property records show that the 156-acre wooded hideaway in the small town of Bradford, New Hampshire, where Ms Maxwell was arrested, was bought for $1.1million on Dec 13 2019, by a company named Granite Reality LLC.
The manager of Granite, which was incorporated in November 2019, is named as Jeffrey W Roberts, a Boston lawyer. Mr Roberts is also the registered agent for a second company, Hopley Yeaton, whose manager is named as “Scott Borgerson”. The Daily Telegraph has also found that both Mr Roberts and Mr Borgerson are named as two of the three trustees on an LLC named Angara Trust. The third trustee is Christine Yvonne Malina-maxwell, Ms Maxwell’s older sister.
Mr Borgerson did not reply to a request for comment last night.