Ghislaine Maxwell says she was Epstein’s employee not his madam. She wants part of his estate

She hasn’t appeared publicly in months and her former neighbors just off posh Park Avenue say they’ve heard nothing. Yet from some undisclosed location, Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime partner and alleged enabler in his sex trafficking network, has filed a claim against the estate of the multimillionaire financier.

The filing seeks an unspecified amount of money. It will play out in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the estate of the disgraced businessman is being settled. It was filed on Friday but it appeared on the docket late Tuesday, just hours before the March 18 deadline that effectively closes the window for asking the court for a piece of Epstein’s fortune.

In addition to legal fees, Maxwell wants compensation for expenses incurred in hiring private security and “costs to find safe accommodation” because of her “prior employment relationship” with Epstein. The filing called her an employee of several Epstein entities from 1998 to 2006.

“While under Epstein’s employ, Maxwell was responsible for managing Epstein’s properties located in New York, Paris, Florida, New Mexico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands,” the filing said. “During the course of their relationship, including while Maxwell was in Epstein’s employ, Epstein promised Maxwell that he would support her financially. Epstein made these promises to Maxwell repeatedly, both in writing and in conversation.”

Lawyers for Maxwell said that while alive, Epstein kept that promise, paying her legal bills in lawsuits involving accusers Sarah Ransome and Virginia Roberts (who now goes by Virginia Giuffre.) Epstein’s longtime attorney, Darren Indyke, now a co-executor of the estate, arranged those payments, Maxwell said.

Maxwell vs. Epstein estate by Casey Frank on Scribd

“Maxwell receives regular threats to her life and safety, which have required her to hire personal security services and find safe accommodation,” the filing alleges, giving new details about her lifestyle since Epstein’s death last summer but no hint of her whereabouts.

How the law, the press and his victims finally caught up with Jeffrey Epstein

The longtime Epstein associate sent a letter last November to Epstein’s two co-executors, the New York Times reported Wednesday ahead of the filing becoming public, asking for the payments to continue but did not hear back. Her lawyers wrote that she expects to continue to face threats.

“These expenses will be ongoing given the extensive global coverage and interest in these events and proceedings, wrote lawyers for the law firm Quintairos, Prieto, Wood & Boyer, whose Miami office and Virgin Islands attorney filed the action on behalf of Maxwell. The firm did not responded to requests for comment. Nor did Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise George, who has brought a civil enforcement action against the Epstein estate.

Several of the women who allege sexual abuse at the hands of Epstein when they were minors also assert that Maxwell helped procure young girls for him.

Legal counsel for these victims reacted angrily to Maxwell’s filing seeking compensation.

“It is absolutely appalling that Ghislaine Maxwell, who committed crimes with Epstein against these victims, is seeking to drain funds from the very estate that should be paying the Epstein victims’ claims,” said Sigrid McCawley with Boies Schiller Flexner LLP. “ We view her actions as unconscionable but this is an individual who lost sight of right from wrong a very long time ago.”

The most recent court-ordered valuation of Epstein’s estate, in February, estimated its worth at $636.1 million. Maxwell’s filing before the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands, which is settling his estate, denies knowledge of Epstein’s misconduct.

Those who knew Epstein and Maxwell describe her fervor in serving and protecting him. Maxwell, 58, has long said she had a special relationship with him.

Search for images of her on the Internet, and there is Maxwell on Epstein’s arm alongside Donald and Melania Trump. She appears in photos with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, British royal Prince Andrew and even in one with Epstein and movie mogul and recently convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein.

Maxwell has largely been missing since Epstein’s death by hanging last Aug. 10 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. The death, classified as a suicide, was the culmination of Epstein’s downward spiral following the Miami Herald’s Perversion of Justice series that highlighted how powerful people helped him escape punishment in 2008.

Since then she was photographed reading a book on espionage at a Southern California In-N-Out Burger, maybe spotted briefly in New England and reported — without any proof — to have been in southern Brazil, Israel or even in FBI custody at a safe house.

So it raised eyebrows when rumors surfaced in the Virgin Islands that Maxwell might file a claim against the tangled Epstein estate to recover money. She was not named when Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise George in January labeled Epstein’s businesses a criminal enterprise. Maxwell was spared the co-conspirator label George weeks later applied to Epstein’s personal U.S. lawyers, Darren K. Indyke and Richard D. Kahn, whom she is trying to keep from involvement in a victim compensation fund.

Just when the socialite Maxwell and Epstein met is unclear. They seemed to have begun dating in London or soon after her move to New York in the early 1990s during a period where Epstein worked as a financial bounty hunter helping investors sniff out embezzlement. He had befriended her famous father, British publishing giant Robert Maxwell, who mysteriously died in November 1991 after disappearing from his 180-foot yacht named the Lady Ghislaine for his daughter.

He was found floating in the ocean. His daughter told the news media at the time that she thought he’d been murdered. He was accused posthumously of embezzling millions from the pension funds of his companies. British newspapers have reported that she has received about $160,000 a year from a Liechtenstein trust since her father’s death.

Epstein and Maxwell reportedly dated for a number of years but their relationship developed into a de-facto business partnership. People who knew them both considered her his obsessive gatekeeper and protector. His victims say she was also his procurer of a seemingly endless source of underage girls who would be paid to massage him but then suffered sexual abuse.

In 2000, Maxwell began living in a nearly $5 million property just a few blocks from New York City’s Central Park and close to Epstein’s palatial Upper East Side mansion, itself across the street from the famed Frick Collection gallery. Property records in New York show Maxwell’s town home was owned by a secretive limited liability company called 116 East 65th Street LLC., formed on June 15, 2000, for the purchase. The LLC traced back to Epstein’s Madison Avenue address, and correspondence was designated in care of Indyke, Epstein’s longtime lawyer.

Maxwell’s New York property highlights how her finances appeared to be intertwined with those of Epstein, who by then was managing the investments of Leslie Wexner, the wealthy retailing magnate who founded The Limited and later owner of Victoria’s Secret.

New York permit records from 2013 list Maxwell as owner of the five-floor, 12-room property and president of the limited liability company, which was formally dissolved on Jan. 3, 2018, according to corporate records.

Sales records for the Maxwell-occupied home show it sold for about $15 million in April 2016. That was less than the $16.5 million it was listed for in April 2009 amid Epstein’s legal troubles, which he escaped with a controversial non-prosecution deal. The property was removed from listing in October 2009, months after his July release from incarceration in Florida.

Maxwell reportedly is or was licensed to fly helicopters and pilot submarines and was described as a woman of multiple interests and talents. She frequently accompanied Epstein at his other properties, including the Zorro Ranch in New Mexico and Little St. James, the private island in the Virgin Islands where he built a massive compound that became his main residence after serving a minimal sentence for a state charge of solicitation of a minor.

In the final years of Epstein’s life, Maxwell ran a non-profit organization called The TerraMar Project. Ostensibly for ocean conservation, it’s not clear what exactly it actually did when operating between 2012 and 2017.