Farage aide seized over ‘fraud and extortion’
including attempted extortion, moneylaundering and fraud, after he was led away in handcuffs.
Mr Cottrell, who runs Mr Farage’s office as well as handling media inquiries, is alleged to have advertised his services to potential clients via the “dark web” using the alias “Bill”.
He was contacted by a gang of drug traffickers in 2014, and promised to launder money for them through offshore accounts in “complete anonymity and security”, court documents claim.
However, the traffickers were in reality FBI agents. He then met the undercover agents in Las Vegas, and arranged for them to send him £15,500, before threatening to expose the “traffickers” to the authorities if they did not pay him £62,000 worth of internet currency bitcoin, the indictment adds. Mr Cottrell’s bank and email accounts have been frozen, leaving Mr Farage unable to access his personal diary, it has been claimed.
Documents filed at the US District Court in Illinois allege Mr Cottrell has a “serious, years-long gambling problem, which inherently suggests a strong possibility of irrational risk-taking” and that he poses a “serious flight risk”.
Mr Cottrell, who is thought to be worth around £250 million, is the nephew of Lord Hesketh, a hereditary peer and former Conservative Party treasurer who defected to Ukip in 2011.
His mother, Fiona Cottrell, a onetime girlfriend of the Prince of Wales, was named “Pet of the Month” when she posed naked in magazine in 1973, under the pseudonym Frances Cannon, a decision that spelled the end of her romantic link to the Prince.
Mr Cottrell was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare airport on July 22 as he and Mr Farage headed to Heathrow. The pair had attended the Republican Party convention in Cleveland, where they appeared on television, and met aides to Donald Trump.
Mr Farage is understood to have been unaware his colleague was being watched by FBI agents.
Mr Cottrell appeared briefly in court four days after he was seized, and is due to be extradited to Phoenix, Arizona, an FBI spokesman in Ohio confirmed.
A Ukip spokesman said: “George was an unpaid and enthusiastic volunteer over the period of the referendum.”