Ghislaine Maxwell's Secret Husband
The unexplored man, money, and shell companies that surfaced after Epstein’s arrest
by Ellie Leonard, BAM Contributing Editor
On July 2nd, 2020, nearly a year after Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest at Teterboro Airport, and seven months after the FBI began searching for her, Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested on a 156-acre property in rural New Hampshire. She would be indicted on six counts, including “conspiracy to transport minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity” and perjury.
But how Maxwell got to New Hampshire is a piece of this puzzle that may have surprised us all when it was discovered at her bail hearing (which she was denied) that she was married. In fact, she was considering divorcing her husband of nearly four years “to protect him...from the terrible consequences of being associated with her.” But who was he, and how did he get mixed up with the Epstein case this late in the game? And how did he end up with Ghislaine Maxwell, the biggest co-conspirator of them all?
Let’s go back a few years.
In 2012, Maxwell started the TerraMar Project, a conservation group aimed at protecting the world’s oceans. She spoke on behalf of the project at the 2013 Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland. It was there that she met a young CEO of a maritime innovation company, Scott Borgerson, who served on the board of the Assembly and had been chosen to moderate a discussion on “Business in the Arctic.” Drinks were poured. People mingled. And by the end of the night, Maxwell was smitten with the environmentally-driven former Coastie, whom she’d later tell her friends was a Navy SEAL. These same friends would tell the tabloids that Maxwell had a “singular ability to mythologize her own reality” (i.e., lie).
Before long, Maxwell hired Borgerson to work as the director of TerraMar, though there didn’t seem to be any actual work to do, nor did the project donate money or provide assistance anywhere in the environmental and oceanic landscape, and it would fizzle out around the time of Epstein’s arrest in 2019.
Without getting too conspiratorial here, Borgerson fit. Think Robert Maxwell. Think Jeffrey Epstein. Think sudden funds and international relations that don’t make sense. Borgerson, whose mother taught high-school French and Spanish and whose dad was a Marine infantry official, nearly ended up as a Presbyterian priest before attending the Coast Guard Academy, then Tufts for a master’s in Law and Diplomacy, and then a PhD in International Relations. In 2007, he served as a fellow in residence on the Council on Foreign Relations and wrote for their online magazine for nearly five years. In 2010, he founded CargoMetrics, a data analytics and maritime trade firm based in Boston that focused on ship-tracking data and global trade. Combine foreign languages, law, diplomacy, and international relations with shipping and data and global trade, and you have the perfect Maxwell-era protégé.
“There’s a lot that motivates me, including — if I’m honest — I have a big chip on my shoulder to beat the prep school, Ivy League, MBA crowd. They’re bred to make money, but they’re not smarter than everyone else; they just have more patina and connections.” - Scott Borgerson
By the time Maxwell met Borgerson, he was married with two small children and worth several million dollars. But a year later, his wife would file for divorce and move out of the home they’d been renting in Manchester, Massachusetts. Soon after, Borgerson and Maxwell quietly combined their assets of nearly $23 million, and on June 30th, 2016, she sold her Upper East Side mansion for $15 million. But three days prior to the sale, and three days prior to the purchase of Borgerson’s rented home, a new LLC was formed, Tidewood, run by Borgerson and a quiet partner, “Jennifer Ellmax.”
Upon further inspection, there is no “Jennifer Ellmax.”
Maxwell and Borgerson purchased the 6,113 square foot home for $2,450,000 and moved in, prepared to live their life in private as Maxwell fought the 2015 defamation lawsuit against Virginia (Roberts) Giuffre. The lawsuit alleged Maxwell had repeatedly and publicly called Giuffre—who had accused both Epstein and Maxwell of sexual abuse—a liar, claiming she’d made up all the stories about the island, the planes, the world leaders, and especially Prince Andrew.
“...and this bullshit, I believe that this whole thing was manufactured. And I can point you to some potentially corroborating evidence of this... [LAUGHTER]” - Ghislaine Maxwell
But soon all that was in the rearview mirror, as Maxwell settled with Giuffre for an undisclosed amount and planned to live out her life with her new husband near the ocean they loved.
But on July 6th, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport, indicted on two counts of sex trafficking minors, and Ghislaine Maxwell’s perfect world by the sea began to collapse. And just as the FBI added her to their list of co-conspirators, Maxwell hightailed it out of her Manchester-by-the-Sea estate and disappeared in what would become an international manhunt that crossed the United States, Europe, and Israel.
But she hadn’t gone far. In fact, Ghislaine Maxwell and Scott Borgerson had done it again, starting another LLC two hours north in Bradford, New Hampshire. Under the guise of “Granite Reality,” the pair purchased another home from an unsuspecting realtor who referred to them as “Scott and Janet Marshall.” Janet was a journalist who just wanted privacy. Scott had retired from the British military and was writing a book. She said they both had British accents, and it could be that Maxwell had brought along one of her security guards to pose as “Scott” as they scoped out the new property.
“...he was retired from the British military and he was currently working on writing a book. Janet Marshall described herself as a journalist who wants privacy. They told the agent they wanted to purchase the property quickly through a wire and that they were setting up an LLC.” - U.S. v Ghislaine Maxwell
On July 2nd, 2020, the FBI surrounded Maxwell’s New Hampshire property, after using cellphone and financial records to find her. When they knocked on her door, she fled to an interior room in the house. Her lawyers would deny this, claiming she was in her pajamas and that the front door was unlocked, which the FBI knocked down. When they apprehended her, she was holding a phone wrapped in tinfoil and standing behind her security guard, one of a British team she’d hired to surveil the property while the FBI closed in.
They took her into custody and booked her into the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, charging her with 6 counts of transporting minors to engage in criminal sexual activity. She’d be convicted on five of the charges in December 2021, sentenced six months later, and has spent the last four years perjuring herself in hopes of a pardon from the Trump Administration. In July 2024, she sat down with U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche to plead her case. As a result, she was moved from a low-security women’s prison in Florida to a minimum-security (”club fed”) in Texas, where she’s seen a bump in her amenities.
Scott Borgerson has retreated from public life, resigning his position at CargoMetrics and co-founding a small green-energy startup, H2X. His marriage to Maxwell reportedly ended over a phone call while she was in solitary confinement, though there appears to be no record of a marriage license anywhere. So maybe it was love; maybe it was business. Maybe legitimate; maybe common-law. But by all accounts, he’s moved on and is rumored to be dating a 50-year-old yoga instructor out of Manchester. He still has Maxwell’s dog, a purebred vizsla named “Secretary Hamilton,” and likely he still has some of her assets. Because in 2022, a law firm out of Colorado sued Borgerson, along with Maxwell and her brother Kevin, for unpaid legal fees to the tune of $956,000. Borgerson would settle out of the case; the firm is still pursuing the Maxwell siblings.
Borgerson sold the Manchester home in 2023 for $5.85 million, but still owns their home in New Hampshire and is reportedly worth $20-$25 million.
Ghislaine Maxwell is scheduled to be released from federal prison on July 17, 2037.
Nicely done.
What an absolutely enthralling timeline this all makes!
A great job Ellie, both in research and writing.