Ex-British Military Were Guarding Ghislaine Maxwell's Home [View all]

[MelissaB]

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SDNY Prosecutors Identify ‘Glaring Red Flags,’ Say Ex-British Military Were Guarding Ghislaine Maxwell’s Home

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More troubling still, the defendant’s conduct at the time of her arrest further underscores the risk of flight she poses. When FBI agents arrived at the defendant’s remote property in New Hampshire on the morning of July 2, 2020, they discovered the property was barred by a locked gate. After breaching the gate, the agents observed an individual who was later determined to be a private security guard. As the agents approached the front door to the main house, they announced themselves as FBI agents and directed the defendant to open the door. Through a window, the agents saw the defendant ignore the direction to open the door and, instead, try to flee to another room in the house, quickly shutting a door behind her. Agents were ultimately forced to breach the door in order to enter the house to arrest the defendant, who was found in an interior room in the house. Moreover, as the agents conducted a security sweep of the house, they also noticed a cell phone wrapped in tin foil on top of a desk, a seemingly misguided effort to evade detection, not by the press or public, which of course would have no ability to trace her phone or intercept her communications, but by law enforcement.

Prosecutors further said that a security guard at Maxwell’s New Hampshire residence, who was there when the FBI breached the gate, told agents that Maxwell’s brother hired former British military members to guard the property. According to the security guard, Maxwell never left the remote New Hampshire property “during his time working there”:

Following the defendant’s arrest, the FBI spoke with the security guard, who informed the agents that the defendant’s brother had hired a security company staffed with former members of the British military to guard the defendant at the New Hampshire property, in rotations. The defendant provided one of the guards with a credit card in the same name as the LLC that had purchased the New Hampshire property in cash. The guard informed the FBI that the defendant had not left the property during his time working there, and that instead, the guard was sent to make purchases for the property using the credit card. As these facts make plain, there should be no question that the defendant is skilled at living in hiding.