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FBI Used Cellular Data To Track Ghislaine Maxwell To Phone Account ‘G Max’ And New Hampshire Hideout
Jeffrey Epstein's accused enabler was pinpointed to her secluded hideout in New Hampshire, apparently through a "stingray" device that mimics a cellular tower.
Newly unsealed court documents have reportedly revealed that cellphone data led federal authorities to Ghislaine Maxwell’s secret New England hideout, where she had fled after the arrest of her friend and confidant Jeffrey Epstein.
Since Epstein’s 2019 arrest, Maxwell, the financier’s alleged co-conspirator, was rumored to be everywhere from Israel to France, California, and New Jersey, but the FBI was ultimately able to pinpoint her location at a rural mansion in New Hampshire through the tracking of cellphone data.
The British socialite had opened a cellphone account under the name “G Max” while in hiding and used it to contact her rumored husband, the tech CEO Scott Borgerson, as well as her sister and one of her lawyers, the Daily Beast reports. The outlet obtained an affidavit for a search warrant which was filed one day before the 59-year-old socialite was arrested.
The warrant permitted investigators to "use an investigative device or devices capable of broadcasting signals that will be received by” Maxwell’s phone “or receiving signals from nearby cellular devices,” according to the document.
The Daily Beast reports that the affidavit suggests that to assist in the investigation, the FBI used a “stingray” device, which is portable equipment that forces cellphones in the nearby area to connect to it instead of a nearby cell phone tower.
“Such a device may function in some respects like a cellular tower, except that it will not be connected to the cellular network and cannot be used by a cellphone to communicate with others,” the affidavit states.
Maxwell essentially vanished from public view after Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges in the summer of 2019. The financier was found dead in his federal prison cell in New York a month later at age 66. He had referred to Maxwell as his "best friend" in a 2003 Vanity Fair profile.
However, their relationship was allegedly much more than mere friendship. A federal indictment formerly unsealed and obtained by Oxygen.com alleges that Maxwell selected teen girls along with other alleged recruiters, in Epstein's pyramid of sexual abuse, then would lure them to Epstein's mansion. Epstein would allegedly pay the girls — some as young as 14 years old — to massage him, and then escalate the encounters to sexual abuse.
The socialite moved to the United States in 1991 after the death of her father, Robert Maxwell, himself a disgraced publishing tycoon. She and Epstein dated in the early 1990s before their relationship apparently morphed into a new dynamic, with her playing the role of friend and confidante.
Maxwell has been charged with enticement and conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, transportation and conspiracy to transport minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, as well as perjury in connection with three girls who were allegedly sexually abused in the 1990s. She faces trial this summer and has twice been denied bail. She has pleaded not guilty to the charges.