GHISLAINE Maxwell’s appeal against her sex trafficking convictions has been thrown out by a US court.
The 62-year-old was found guilty in December 2021 of luring young girls to massage rooms for Prince Andrew’s paedophile pal Jeffrey Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 2004.
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She was sentenced to 20 years in prison at the federal court in the southern district of New York in June 2022.
On Tuesday, judges upheld her five convictions – including sex trafficking minors, conspiracy to entice a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, and conspiracy to transport a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity.
The decision – issued by three judges in the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan – was unanimous.
The court said Maxwell’s sentence was “procedurally reasonable”.
Maxwell’s lawyer had claimed she was immune from prosecution as Epstein had signed an agreement with prosecutors in Florida in 2008 that covered “co-conspirators”.
She said it barred her from being prosecuted in Manhattan 13 years later.
But judges said the so-called “sweetheart deal” did not protect her from prosecution.
Maxwell also argued that prosecutors “scapegoated” her because Epstein was dead and the public demanded that someone else be held accountable.
And she said her trial was tainted because one juror didn’t disclose that he had been sexually abused as a child.
Maxwell lured vulnerable teenagers for vile multi-millionaire Epstein – who died in jail in 2019 – to abuse at his various luxurious properties.
The pair were described as “partners in crime“.
In what was described as the “trial of the century” in 2022, the jury heard how Maxwell “served up” girls as young as 14 for Epstein – and even joined in the abuse herself.
She was convicted of five out of six counts of sex trafficking by a jury.
Prosecutors had asked the judge to give her 30 to 55 years in prison, while Maxwell’s defence tried to get a more lenient sentence of just five years.
Maxwell was a fixture in high society on both sides of the Atlantic – spending decades attending lavish parties in both New York and London.
She has been described as Epstein’s “madam” or “pimp” who would use money and charisma to lure in young girls – often promising them jobs and a lavish new life before he abused them.
And she is alleged to have been the one who introduced Prince Andrew to Epstein before the Duke allegedly had sex with 17-year-old sex slave Virginia Robert – a claim he strongly denies.
Maxwell was finally snared by the FBI in July 2020 at her hideout in New Hampshire.
She is serving her sentence in a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida – and she is eligible for release in July 2037.
Epstein’s victims have recouped hundreds of millions of dollars from his estate and from banks accused of handling transactions that financed his sexual misconduct.
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