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Prosecutors Face Deadline to Disclose Identities of Ghislaine Maxwell’s Co-Conspirators

by BLUEAPPLES

October 11th marks the most anticipated deadline in the case of U.S. v. Ghislaine Maxwell since dozens of previously sealed documents in the matter were ordered to be released to the public in early July. The unsealed documents cast new light on the extent of Maxwell’s involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal enterprise which trafficked children for sex abuse, giving federal prosecutors essential information to construct their case. This release prompted Maxwell’s defense team to put the prosecutor’s feet to the fire, as they launched formal requests to have the identities of any co-conspirators present in those disclosures who could offer statements against Maxwell to be revealed. While that initial request from the defense was made without objection in August, a court order issued on September 3rd by Judge Alison J. Nathan sets October 11th as the date by which federal prosecutors must disclose the identities of the co-conspirators they intend to name once Maxwell’s trial begins on November 29th.

The order conveys that the prosecution intends to offer statements from two people it has identified as Epstein and Maxwell’s co-conspirators. Given the high profile names associated with their illicit activities, speculation regarding who the prosecution has taken statements from is sure to run rampant. Epstein’s associates include everyone from former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump to magnates of finance and industry such as Leon Black and Bill Gates. Yet, an examination of the documents unsealed in July aids in narrowing down who those co-conspirators more likely than not will be.

The documents that were initially placed under seal following the settlement of a defamation case between Virginia Roberts Guiffre and Maxwell, which concluded in 2017. Guiffre has been the most visible of Epstein and Maxwell’s accusers, becoming the face of those who fell victim to their crimes. Mrs. Guiffre’s public position against Epstein would become the catalyst for her defamation suit against Maxwell in 2015. Following her claims that Maxwell was aided Epstein in recruiting over 30 underage girls, some as young as just 15 years old, which detailed that Maxwell herself had participated in the child sex abuse. Guiffre would allege that the Mossad-linked British socialite utilized her vastly expansive media connections to circulate stories defaming the victim’s credibility to undermine those accusations. By 2017, Maxwell was able to forge a settlement with Guiffre to avoid the defamation case going to court. Yet, the settlement would only delay the exposure of the sordid details contained in the dozens of depositions that Guiffre’s counsel would offer as evidence against Maxwell in the defamation case. Those depositions were taken from multiple cases against Maxwell and Epstein, among others such as a case brought against  legal scholar and alleged frequent Little St. James Island visitor Alan Dershowitz. The revelations contained within that deposition testimony offers tremendous insight into who the potential co-conspirators that will be named by federal prosecutors come October 11th could be.

Much of the deposition testimony touches upon the State of Florida’s criminal case against the deceased Epstein, which resulted in the controversial non-prosecution agreement handed to Epstein by Former Trump Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta under recommendation of the FBI which was led by Robert Mueller as its director at the time. Despite appeals against the legality of that agreement which asserted that it violated the federal Crime Victim’s Rights Act by being accepted before offering victims of Epstein’s the opportunity to testify, the non-prosecution agreement was upheld by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Outcry from victim’s rights groups was pronounced following the decision to uphold the non-prosecution agreement, with many highlighting the difficulties it created for victims of Epstein’s to seek financial compensation from his estate. However, another ramification of the decision was that keeping the agreement intact preserved the immunity that the Department of Justice extended to four women it named as “potential co-conspirators” of Epstein’s. Those four are Lesley Groff, Adriana Ross, Sarah Kellen, and Nadia Marcinkova.

While Ross has become untraceable in the time since she was afforded immunity, Kellen, Groff, and Marcinkova have remained accessible. Kellen, who the FBI noted would handle Epstein’s contacts and book “massages” for him, would undertake the alias Sarah Kensington and begin a career in interior design after marrying NASCAR driver Brian Vickers. Groff would be employed as Epstein’s executive assistant in the late 1990’s and would hold onto her role until she resigned in 2019. Groff contends that her position of employment related to Epstein’s career in finance and that she was removed from any of Epstein’s criminal activities. Marcinkova, however, has the most apparent record of being intimately involved with Epstein and Maxwell as a suspected co-conspirator as evident from her training as a pilot which eventually led her to be trusted by Epstein enough to fly the infamous “Lolita Express.”

The unsealed deposition testimony offers federal prosecutors sparse information about Ross and Groff upon examination. The former of that pair is mentioned just once in the deposition of Juan Alessi. Alessi was employed in a part-time capacity with Epstein and would become tasked with paying Epstein’s “massage therapists” as part of a tangled web of bureaucracy that Epstein established through Maxwell to veil the abuse from people like Alessi who were tasked with carrying out mundane operations to manage his Palm Beach property. In his deposition testimony, Alessi is questioned about the Ross’s capacity of employment but conveys that while he was not aware of what her position was, citing that all employee’s of Epstein’s were required to sign confidentiality agreements as a prerequisite of their employment. Groff is also mentioned sparingly in all of the 52 unsealed documents. The subject of her position briefly came up during the deposition of Alfredo Rodriguez, who was the household manager of Epstein’s Palm Beach residence from 2004 to 2008. Rodriguez only mentions Groff innocuously, acknowledging that he had come into contact with her in her capacity as Epstein’s executive assistance during his employment.

While the Ross and Groff’s roles are not elucidated much in any of those depositions, Kellen and Marcinkova are much more central figures of interest. Their names come up dozens and dozens of times, implicating each of them as being much closer to Maxwell than either Ross or Groff. For instance, on page 26 of Alfredo Gonzalez’s deposition, he states that he was aware of Kellen’s role as another one of Epstein’s assistants as she was tasked with delivering instructions to him from Epstein, making Rodriguez’s contact with the deceased sexual predator entirely indirect as Kellen fulfilled the role of his proxy, thus being a central figure in managing the daily on-goings of his Palm Beach residence in a hands on manner. Rodriguez would go on to say that Kellen was also supervised by Maxwell, as she would be beholden to tasks and orders delegated directly from her. The dynamic that Rodriguez conveys existed between Kellen and Maxwell implies that the two had a much more close working relationship than that which existed between Maxwell and either Groff or Ross. While Kellen’s own deposition is among the unsealed documents, it offers very little insight, as she chose to evoke her fifth amendment right against self incrimination upon being asked pointed questions regarding her involvement in recruiting underage girls for Epstein and any cooperation she may have engaged in with Maxwell.

While Nadia Marcinkova’s deposition testimony is very much like Sarah Kellen’s, as she too would exercise her right to protect herself against self-incrimination by simply replying “fifth…” each time she was asked about her role as part of Epstein and Maxwell’s network. However, her public image produces much more insight into the scope of her role and the extent of her contributions as a potential co-conspirator.

Marcinkova is presently the Founder and CEO of Aviloop. Until 2019, Aviloop disclosed its address as being situated in a building managed by Ossa Properties, a property management company owned by Mark Epstein — the brother of Jeffrey. In 2019, Mark Epstein was contacted for comment regarding whether or not Aviloop was currently a tenant of that property. Shortly thereafter, the address was removed from the Aviloop website, although it is listed as the address of record with the New York State Department’s Division of Corporations. Coincidentally, Sarah Kellen’s interior design company — SLK Designs — was also addressed in a different suite in that same property. The Aviloop website states that it harnesses Marcinko’s experience as a pilot for the consulting firm’s focus on companies based in the aviation industry. Unsurprisingly, the details of her piloting experience exclude the role Jeffrey Epstein played in providing her with formal pilot training. Aviloop’s services include marketing, social media services, and event management. The company’s explicit mission is declared as its pursuit to “help employers diversify their crews,” presumably by employing more women into their workforce. In the mission statement section of its website, Aviloop states:

Diverse teams are smarter. Through our sister company – Aviatri – we aim to make cockpits safer by raising the number of women in aviation. We can help employers find qualified professional female pilots to join their team.

A nuanced, yet starkly important disclosure of that mission statement is the passive mention of Aviatri, the “sister company” of Aviloop. Though Aviloop has a formal record of incorporation with the State of New York through its Division of Corporations, no such record exists for Aviatri. According to its now defunct website, the self-declared sister company of Aviloop held a much more narrow mission which specialized in “recruiting aspiring female pilots.” As Aviloop’s online marketing video’s suggest, that recruiting effort seemingly serves a much more suspect purpose.

Aviatri’s website was operational until 2019, when an exposé of its association with Aviloop and its ties to Marcinkova and Mark Epstein’s property management company resulted in immediate alterations to its website. The Aviatri home page was changed to state that the previously fully operational website was suddenly “under construction.” Yet, simply accessing the homepage’s direct URL would still bring visitors to the site until it was entirely taken down months later.

The sketchy details of Marcinkova’s companies, along with her immunity from Jeffrey Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement and the implications made in the unsealed files from Virginia Guiffre’s defamation case make her a valuable asset to federal prosecutors in their case against Ghislaine Maxwell. While it’s entirely speculative, the abundance of publicly information available information about her conveys how closely she operated within the Epstein-Maxwell access.

In addition to being trusted to fly the Lolita Express, other victims of Epstein who offered testimony to the State of Florida against him in 2007 detailed the uniquely depraved dynamic of his relationship with Marcinkova. During the course of investigating Epstein in 2005, one of his victim’s in the case against him in Florida stated that Epstein told her that he purchased her for the purposes of being his “Yugoslavian sex slave.” While Marcinkova was born in what was Czechoslovakia, she and her family did move to Yugoslavia before she ended up under Epstein’s grip. This is particularly relevant given speculation surrounding Epstein’s connections to Dyncorp, a U.S. military contractor that was implicated to have engaged in human trafficking operations in Bosnia following the Balkanization of the former Yugoslavian republics.

The incident reports from the Palm Beach Police Department’s 2005 investigation that detail the origins of Epstein and Marcinkova’s association also included statements alleging that she was used as a tool for Epstein to lure other under aged girls to sexually abuse. The information detailed in these investigative reports was documented by Palm Beach Police Department Detective Joseph Recarey. According to Recarey’s own deposition testimony in the matter brought against Epstein following his 2005 investigation, the detective placed Marcinkova, Maxwell, and Mark Epstein at the Palm Beach residence as frequent guests, if not residents. In 2018, it was announced that Recarey died following a brief illness at the age of 50. Despite his unexpected demise, his work was central to Epstein’s eventual brief term of imprisonment, in which Marcinkova visited the sex offender approximately 90 times during his 13-month sentence.

While Detective Recarey initially took an understandably sympathetic position on Marcinkova, viewing her as more of a victim of Epstein’s than an accomplice, Epstein’s insistence that she be afforded immunity along with Kellen, Groff, and Ross as part of his plea deal conveys that her role in his network could have been much more active. That, coupled with the ongoing operations of Aviloop and Aviatri following Epstein’s purported “death” at a time where Ghislaine Maxwell was still at-large convey additional circumstances where her involvement associates of Epstein’s like his brother and Maxwell could compel prosecutors to seek a statement from her.

With this pivotal October 11th deadline rapidly approaching, whoever prosecutor’s name under direction of Judge Alison J. Nathan’s order will turn the page in the Epstein-Maxwell saga onto a new chapter. While their vast network of associates leaves the possibility that it could be others’ identities who will be the ones that are disclosed, the abundance of information that Kellen and Marcinkova are uniquely privy to — much of which sourced from documents that the prosecution worked so ardently to unseal — shows the how much substance possible statements from them would include and the damning impact it could have against Ghislaine Maxwell.


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