[4] Maxwell was arrested and charged by the federal government of the United States in July 2020 with the crimes of enticement of minors and sex trafficking of underage girls, related to her association with Epstein[11] as his recruiter.

[12][13] She was denied bail as a flight risk, with the judge expressing concerns regarding her "completely opaque" finances, her skill at living in hiding, and the fact that France does not extradite its citizens.

[19] Throughout childhood, Maxwell lived with her family in Oxford at Headington Hill Hall, a 53-room mansion, where the offices of Pergamon Press, a publishing company run by her father, were also located.

According to Tom Bower, writing for The Sunday Times, in 1986 Robert invited her to the naming in her honour of his new yacht the Lady Ghislaine, at a shipyard in the Netherlands.

[26] She attended her father's funeral in Jerusalem alongside Israeli intelligence figures, president Chaim Herzog, and prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, who gave his eulogy.

[44] Two of Maxwell's brothers, Ian and Kevin, who were the most involved with their father in daily business dealings, were arrested on 19 June 1992 and charged with fraud related to the Mirror Group pension scandal.

[51] The Times reported that Maxwell met Epstein in the early 1990s at a New York party following "a difficult break-up with Count Gianfranco Cicogna Mozzoni" (1962–2012) of the CIGA Hotels clan.

[56] Politico reported that Maxwell and Epstein had friendships with several prominent individuals in elite circles of politics, academia, business and law, including former Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, attorney Alan Dershowitz, and Prince Andrew, Duke of York.

[62] In his November 2019 interview with the BBC, Prince Andrew confirmed that Maxwell and Epstein had attended an event at his invitation, but he denied that it was anything more than a "straightforward shooting weekend".

[69] In 2017, Sarah Ransome filed a suit, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, against Epstein and Maxwell, alleging that Maxwell hired her to give massages to Epstein and later threatened to physically harm her or destroy her career prospects if she did not comply with their sexual demands at his mansion in New York and on his private Caribbean island of Little Saint James, in the United States Virgin Islands.

[10][50][70][71] On 16 April 2019, Maria Farmer went public and filed a sworn affidavit in federal court in New York, alleging that she and her 15-year-old sister, Annie, had been sexually assaulted by Epstein and Maxwell in separate locations in 1996.

The affidavit says that in the summer of the following year, they hired her to work on an art project in billionaire businessman Leslie Wexner's Ohio mansion, where she was then sexually assaulted by both Maxwell and Epstein.

[79] Araoz later amended her complaint on 8 October 2019 with the names of the previously unidentified women enablers to include Lesley Groff, Cimberly Espinosa, and the late Rosalyn Fontanilla.

[81] The woman filing the suit, identified as "Priscilla Doe", claimed that she was recruited in 2006 and trained by Maxwell with step-by-step instructions on how to provide sexual services for Epstein.

[82][83] Annie Farmer, represented by David Boies, sued Maxwell and Epstein's estate in Federal District Court in Manhattan in November 2019, accusing them of rape, battery and false imprisonment and seeking unspecified damages.

[84][85] In January 2020, a lawsuit was filed against Maxwell and Epstein alleging that they recruited a 13-year-old music student at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in the summer of 1994 and subjected her to sexual abuse.

[86] On 12 March 2020, Maxwell filed a lawsuit in Superior Court in the US Virgin Islands seeking compensation from Epstein's estate for her legal costs.

[87][88] Maxwell claimed she had been a longtime employee of Epstein (from 1998 to 2006)[89] who had served to manage his property holdings in the US Virgin Islands, New York, New Mexico, Florida and Paris[90] while continuing to deny any knowledge or involvement in his criminal activities.

[104] According to court documents from a lawsuit filed by Epstein against Bradley Edwards (a representative for several of his accusers), in 2010 Maxwell had agreed to provide a deposition in the case but reportedly left the country one day before Edwards was scheduled to fly to New York to take her deposition, "claiming she needed to return to the United Kingdom to be with her deathly ill mother"[105] with no intention of returning to the United States.

[13] A court filing from the USVI Department of Justice, released on 10 July 2020, stated that Maxwell was also under investigation for her alleged participation in Epstein's sex trafficking operation in the US Virgin Islands.

[107] Prosecutors, led by United States District Attorney Audrey Strauss, charged Maxwell with six federal crimes, including enticement of minors, sex trafficking of children, and perjury.

[126][127] On 26 January 2021, a motion by Maxwell's attorneys challenged her grand jury indictment, claiming that it did not reflect the ethnic diversity of the jurisdiction in which the violations of the law were alleged to have occurred.

[131] Maxwell's attorneys regularly protested about the conditions of her confinement, which included being kept awake by a light shone in her eyes every fifteen minutes to deter the chances of her committing suicide, and being denied a sleep mask.

[132] In April 2021, US District Judge Alison Nathan ruled that Maxwell would face two separate trials, one for the sex trafficking charges and another for perjury.

[148][149] On 1 April 2022, the judge found that the juror's failure to disclose his abuse as a child did not warrant a new trial and dismissed Maxwell's request to set aside the verdict.

[156] On 25 July 2022, Maxwell was transferred from Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn to a low security federal prison for female inmates at FCI Tallahassee.

[35] The TerraMar Project announced its closure on 12 July 2019, less than a week after the charges of sex trafficking brought by New York federal prosecutors against Epstein became public.

[10] Following her personal and professional involvement with Epstein, Maxwell was romantically linked for several years to Ted Waitt, founder of Gateway Computers.

[35] Maxwell helped Waitt obtain and renovate a luxury yacht, the Plan B, and used it for travel to France and Croatia before their relationship ended, in late 2010[33] or early 2011.

[180][181] Maxwell moved to a remote 156-acre (63 ha) property in Bradford, New Hampshire in late 2019,[182] where she used former British military personnel as personal security until her arrest in July 2020.