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Ghislaine Maxwell secretly married but won't reveal husband's identity say NY prosecutors

Ghislaine Maxwell sketched during her video-link arraignment on Monday - Reuters
Ghislaine Maxwell sketched during her video-link arraignment on Monday - Reuters

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 Maxwell’s application for bail that she had a spouse although his name has been withheld.

The existence of a husband might explain why Maxwell chose to remain in the US while being hunted down by the FBI over child sex trafficking allegations rather than fleeing abroad.

She was last year romantically linked to Scott Borgerson, the wealthy chief executive of a tech company based in Boston, but there is no suggestion or evidence the couple ever married. Mr Borgerson has insisted the pair were only friends.

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 using the name ‘Scott Marshall’. But while ‘Scott Marshall’ spoke with a British accent, Scott Borgerson was born in the US and speaks with an American accent.

Property which is believed to be the home of Ghislaine Maxwell in Bradford, New Hampshire
Property which is believed to be the home of Ghislaine Maxwell in Bradford, New Hampshire

The disclosure that Maxwell is married appears to have been made deliberately by prosecutors to bolster its legal argument that she has held back information about both her social circumstances and her finances.

Maxwell’s bail application was rejected and she now faces the prospect of 12 months in prison while awaiting trial in July next year into charges of child sex trafficking and grooming for Jeffrey Epstein, her former boyfriend who killed himself.

Maxwell, a close friend of Prince Andrew and the daughter of the disgraced tycoon Robert Maxwell, has denied all charges including two further counts of perjury.

Prosecutor Alison Moe told the judge during bail arguments in a New York courthouse late on Tuesday that Maxwell was not identifying to court officials who was proposing to put up $5 million bail or even if they lived in the US.

Property which is believed to be the home of Ghislaine Maxwell in Bradford, New Hampshire - Getty
Property which is believed to be the home of Ghislaine Maxwell in Bradford, New Hampshire - Getty

Ms Moe added: "In addition to failing to describe in any way the assets of the proposed co-signer of a bond, the defendant [Maxwell] also makes no mention whatsoever about the financial circumstances or assets of her spouse, whose identity she declined to provide to pretrial 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 Maxwell was married and a former associate in the UK said it would come as a huge surprise. “She never told anyone she was married. We always thought she would remain single.”

According to the court hearing, 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 UK military and was a writer looking for privacy. Ms Moe in her statement to court referred to Maxwell’s alias as both ‘Jen’ and ‘Janet’ adding further confusion.

On Tuesday, New York district judge Alison Nathan deemed Maxwell, 58, a flight risk and ordered that she be held without bail and set a trial date of July 12 2021.

Prosecutors have said they want to interview Prince Andrew as a witness over his relationship with both Maxwell and Epstein, who killed himself in a cell while awaiting trial last year.

Ms Maxwell has been romantically linked in reports to Mr Borgerson, the millionaire CEO of CargoMetrics, a Boston-based data-analytics company for maritime trade and shipping.

Borgerson is believed to have met Maxwell five years ago through speaking engagements connected to ocean preservation - Arctic Cicle/Vimeo
Borgerson is believed to have met Maxwell five years ago through speaking engagements connected to ocean preservation - Arctic Cicle/Vimeo

The British heiress 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 are 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 Maxwell was arrested was bought for $1.1m on December 13, 2019 by a company named Granite Reality LLC.

The manager of Granite, which was incorporated in November 2019, is named as Boston lawyer Jeffrey W. Roberts.

Mr Roberts is also the registered agent for a second company, Hopley Yeaton, whose manager is named as “Scott Borgerson.” The 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, Maxwell’s older sister.

Mr Borgerson did not reply to the Telegraph’s request for comment last night.