The FBI on Thursday morning arrested Jeffrey Epstein’s long-time friend and alleged procurer Ghislaine Maxwell on charges of with conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse children, as well as perjury about her conduct, court files reveal.
The arrest of the British socialite Maxwell on charges laid out in a six-count indictment comes just days before the first anniversary of the wealthy investor Epstein’s own arrest in the case on child sex traffic charges.
The indictment accuses Maxwell in the mid-1990s of helping him recruit and groom victims under the age of 18, some as young as 14 years old, so that Epstein could sexually abuse them.
Epstein, a 66-year-old convicted sex offender, killed himself in a federal jail in Manhattan last August after being denied bail.
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NBC News, citing law-enforcement sources, said that Maxwell, who herself was a former girlfriend of Epstein, was arrested in Bedford, New Hampshire, at about 8:30 a.m. Thursday. She is scheduled to appear in a federal court sometime Thursday.
Typically, a person charged in a federal criminal case is first presented in the federal district in which they were arrested, not necessarily in the district in which they are charged.
The FBI and a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which is prosecuting the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The SDNY has scheduled a press conference on Maxwell’s arrest for noon ET Thursday in lower Manhattan.
Epstein’s victims have called for the arrest of the daughter of the disgraced media mogul and swindler Robert Maxwell ever since Epstein was charged last July.
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The indictment against Maxwell, handed up by a federal grand jury in Manhattan, says that the charges against her stem from her role “in the sexual exploitation and abuse of multiple minor girls by Jeffrey Epstein.” The indictment says:
“In particular, from at least in and about 1994, up to an including in or about 1997, Maxwell assisted, facilitated, and contributed to Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of minor girls by, among other things, helping Epstein to recruit, groom, and ultimately abused victims known to Maxwell and Epstein to be under the age of 18.”
Epstein was a former friend of Bill Gates, President Bill Clinton, as well as of Britain’s Prince Andrew.
He was arrested last year at a northern New Jersey airport after flying from France. An indictment accused him of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls from 2002 through 2005 at his luxurious residences on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and in Palm Beach, Florida.
