NEW YORK — Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell is being sued by her lawyers for refusing to pay almost $1 million in legal fees, according to new court filings.
Maxwell, 60, owes $878,302 and counting to Colorado-based law firm Haddon, Morgan, and Foreman, P.C., according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Denver on Tuesday.
The British publishing scion, sentenced to 20 years in prison on June 28 for assisting in Epstein’s sexual exploitation of teenage girls, retained the firm in 2015 to defend her against lawsuits brought by the deceased financier’s accusers.
Lawyers, Jeffrey Pagliuca and Laura Menninger, also represented Maxwell at her criminal trial, with the latter delivering closing arguments to the jury. Their firm is also suing her brother, Kevin Maxwell, and estranged husband, Scott Borgerson, whom they accuse of using smoke and mirrors to obscure her fortune.
After her summer 2020 arrest, Maxwell passed the buck to her older brother Kevin to handle her finances while she was imprisoned at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. He paid her lawyers a $100,000 “evergreen” retainer and then repeatedly delayed payments, ignored emails and promised wire transfers that never came, the lawsuit alleges.
Kevin Maxwell stopped short of begging his sister’s attorneys not to withdraw from her case months before she went on trial in Manhattan Federal Court in August 2021 and asked if he could “humbly request” they not abandon her, the suit charges.
He said it wasn’t his sister’s fault the bill hadn’t yet been paid, the legal papers state. He blamed the delay on Borgerson, who created a set of limited liability companies in the months leading to Maxwell’s bust and used her wealth to buy condos and estates in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
“Mr. Maxwell spent the weeks and days leading up to trial assuring (the firm) that he was on the verge of obtaining financing on Ms. Maxwell’s properties that would result in more than enough cash to settle the amount owed,” reads a excerpt of the complaint.
Maxwell’s lawyers say they believe her brother and estranged husband are colluding and that Borgerson acquired the properties with her assets to shelter them from creditors. Borgerson moved to sell two of the properties for tens of millions of dollars after his wife’s conviction, according to the lawsuit. He did not attend her trial.
A lawyer for the Haddon, Morgan, and Foreman law firm did not return a request for comment. The Daily News could not reach representatives for Kevin Maxwell and Borgerson.
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