"As these facts make plain, there should be no question that the defendant is skilled at living in hiding," the prosecutors wrote.
The government's court filing came one day before a hearing in Manhattan on Maxwell's request for bail. Prosecutors said they expected that at least one of Maxwell's accusers will speak at Tuesday's hearing and urge the court to deny Maxwell bail.
The prosecutors also said that since Maxwell's arrest, more people have expressed a willingness to provide authorities with information, which the government said would be reviewed and "has the potential to make the government's case even stronger."
In their filing, prosecutors sought to undermine a key argument made by Maxwell's lawyers last week in seeking her release on bail, that she had been trying to evade "unrelenting and intrusive media coverage" rather than law enforcement.
Maxwell, 58, faces six counts that include transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity and perjury. Prosecutors have accused her of facilitating the sexual abuse of minors by Jeffrey Epstein, her longtime companion and ex-boyfriend.
She has denied any wrongdoing.
She had been in living in hiding, most recently in Bradford, New Hampshire, in the mansion where she was arrested, prosecutors said. They said it was located on a 156-acre property that was acquired in an all-cash purchase in December by a limited liability company that concealed the buyer's identity.
After her arrest, a private security guard who worked on the property told the FBI that Maxwell's brother had hired former British military members to protect her in New Hampshire, the prosecutors said in their filing Monday.
The guard told the agents that he was given a credit card in the same name as the LLC to make purchases on Maxwell's behalf and said that Maxwell did not leave the property at all during his time there, according to prosecutors.
The government has asked the judge, Alison J. Nathan of US District Court, to deny Maxwell bail. She had changed her email address, they said, and registered a new phone number under the name "G Max."
The prosecutors have argued that she posed an "extreme risk of flight" because of her financial resources and other factors. She had passports from three countries, and investigators said they had identified more than 15 bank accounts linked to her, the total balance of which at times exceeded US$20 million ($30 million).
Between 2007 and 2011, the prosecutors had said, more than US$20 million was moved from accounts associated with Epstein to accounts associated with Maxwell, who once was a fixture on New York's social scene. The government called her total financial picture "opaque and indeterminate."
In Maxwell's bail motion last week, her lawyers tried to distance her from Epstein.
They denied that she posed a flight risk and asked Nathan to release her into home confinement on a $5 million bond.
"Ghislaine Maxwell is not Jeffrey Epstein," her lawyers wrote.
Maxwell's arrest came one year after Epstein was charged with sexually exploiting and abusing girls and young women at his mansion in Manhattan and other locations. Audrey Strauss, the acting US attorney in Manhattan, said that Maxwell had "enticed minor girls, got them to trust her, then delivered them into the trap that she and Epstein had set for them."
Epstein, 66, hanged himself in August in his cell in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, where he was being held pending trial.
Since her arrest, Maxwell has been in custody at a different federal jail, in Brooklyn.
Written by: Benjamin Weiser and Nicole Hong
© 2020 THE NEW YORK TIMES
