Ghislaine Maxwell launched hiring drive for recruits to answer phones when she ‘trafficked girls’

Ghislaine Maxwell placed job adverts for recruits to answer phones ‘during school holidays’ when she allegedly trafficked girls for Jeffrey Epstein, the Daily Mail can reveal today.

The adverts were placed in newspapers in Palm Beach, Florida – where Epstein had a mansion – in January 1997. Job seekers were given a phone number to call ‘Miss Maxwell’.

The number matches the one Maxwell gave to police when she was stopped for a driving offence in the US around the same time. She was living at her former boyfriend Epstein’s ‘House of Sin’ at 358 El Brillo Way, Palm Beach.

Details of the three job adverts in the Palm Beach Post and the Palm Beach Daily News emerged on the eve of Maxwell’s trial in New York for allegedly sex trafficking children for the paedophile American financier.

The 12 jurors and six alternates who will decide Maxwell’s fate will be officially seated today at a courthouse in Thurgood Marshall U.S. courthouse in lower Manhattan.  

Ghislaine has pleaded not guilty to six counts, which include sex trafficking of a minor, and faces up to 80 years in prison if convicted. 

She goes on trial today accused of six counts, including enticement of minors and sex trafficking of children between 1994 and 2004. She vehemently denies all the accusations. If convicted she could be jailed for up to 80 years.

The newly discovered job adverts from nearly 25 years ago do not specify the preferred gender of applicants. One in the Palm Beach Post on January 4, 1997, states: ‘Person needed for answering phone & light cleaning during School Holidays. Call Miss Maxwell, 655-3704.’

In 2016, an Epstein accuser called Johanna Sjoberg claimed in a deposition that Maxwell recruited her to provide massages for the tycoon in 2001 when she was at college in Palm Beach.

Miss Sjoberg said she was under the impression she was being hired as a personal assistant, but she soon realised her job was to provide ‘sexual massages’ to Epstein, who she has said told her he needed to have ‘three orgasms a day’. Asked about her first alleged encounter with Maxwell, Miss Sjoberg said: ‘She wanted to know if there was, like, a bulletin board or something that she could post, that she was looking for someone to hire.

‘I told her where she could go to – you know, to put up a listing. And then she asked me if I knew anyone that would be interested in working for her.’

According to Miss Sjoberg’s testimony, Maxwell, 59, explained that she lived in Palm Beach and ‘didn’t want butlers because they’re too stuffy. And so she just liked to hire girls to work at the house, answer phones, get drinks, do the job a butler would do’.

She claimed that in another encounter Maxwell encouraged her to ‘finish the job’ while performing a massage on Epstein, according to court documents.

Miss Sjoberg claims she was ‘punished’ when Epstein failed to orgasm as a result of one of her massages, which Maxwell allegedly told her were necessary because ‘she [Maxwell] would not be able to please him as much as he needed and that is why there were other girls around’. Describing being told off by Maxwell, the then photography student said: ‘She had purchased a camera for me, and I was over there giving Jeffrey a massage. I did not know that she was in possession of the camera until later.

‘She called me after I had left and said: “I have the camera for you, but you cannot receive it yet because you came here and didn’t finish your job and I had to finish it for you”.’

When asked if that meant giving him an orgasm she said: ‘Yes. She was implying that I did not get Jeffrey off, and so she had to do it.’

Miss Sjoberg has claimed previously that Prince Andrew groped her breasts with a Spitting Image puppet of himself at Epstein’s home in New York in 2001.

Accuser: Prince Andrew with Virginia Giuffre in London

The Queen’s second son sidestepped questions about the alleged incident during his notorious BBC Newsnight interview two years ago, saying he may have visited the paedophile’s property but ‘definitely didn’t, definitely, definitely no, no, no activity’.

Miss Sjoberg is not an alleged victim in Maxwell’s trial.

The job adverts apparently placed by Maxwell came a year after she and Epstein allegedly sexually abused a 16-year-old girl called Annie Farmer, one of four alleged victims due to testify against the British socialite.

Attempts by Miss Farmer’s sister Maria to get the FBI and the police to investigate in 1996 failed, leaving Epstein free to pursue his depravity. Last year Miss Farmer, who has waived her right to anonymity, told a court that Maxwell was a ‘sexual predator’ who had ‘never shown any remorse’. Her testimony was a key factor in the judge’s decision to deny Maxwell bail and keep her in a New York jail cell before her trial starting in Manhattan today.

She will be taken from Brooklyn’s grim Metropolitan Detention Centre to a courthouse for the beginning of her six-week trial. She has spent 17 months there in conditions described by her brother as ‘degrading’ and ‘amounting to torture’.

In court papers, she has revealed she has set aside an astonishing £5.2million to pay her legal bills. Her star defence team includes a former federal prosecutor who helped bring down a drug kingpin and another ex-federal prosecutor whose scalps include a mob killer.

They will be up against the formidable US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, with a team of prosecutors who have track records themselves for pulling off high-profile cases. Prosecutors will focus on four women who say they were recruited by Maxwell as teenagers to be abused by Epstein. He killed himself in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on new child sex charges.

According to court documents one of her accusers will detail a ‘repugnant’ sexual act that Epstein did to her. Maxwell’s legal team have objected to evidence about a sex toy. Prosecutors also plan to produce emails allegedly sent by Maxwell to at least two ‘influential men’, setting them up on dates with women.

Court filings claim the messages show Maxwell was ‘using her ability to provide access to women as a form of social currency’.

Prosecutors have also said they intend to introduce up to six pages of Epstein’s infamous ‘Black Book’ of contacts as ‘compelling’ evidence of Maxwell’s guilt. They will claim the book was Maxwell’s and will produce a witness who will testify to that effect.

Prince Andrew’s lawyers are expected to keep a very close eye on proceedings at Maxwell’s trial. A now-notorious photograph, taken in Maxwell’s former London mews house, shows her looking on as a beaming Andrew grips 17-year-old Virginia Roberts by her bare waist. The picture is believed to have been taken by Epstein in 2001. Andrew has said he has no recollection of the picture being taken or of meeting Miss Roberts, now 38.

In 2011, Roberts (now married and living in Australia as Virginia Giuffre) sensationally alleged in the Mail on Sunday that she had met Andrew on three occasions in a matter of weeks in 2001, in London and New York, when she was 17. Miss Giuffre has since claimed that Andrew raped her and is suing him for unspecified damages.

Last week it was confirmed she will not be a witness in Maxwell’s trial. Andrew vehemently denies all her allegations of wrongdoing, including claims he slept with her.