The former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, has been found guilty by a US jury of recruiting and grooming teenage girls.
The 60-year-old was convicted on five of the six charges against her.
She pleaded not guilty to the charges of recruiting four teenagers for Epstein between 1994 and 2004.
Financier Epstein committed suicide in his Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial in 2019 for sex abuse charges.
Maxwell now faces up to 70 years in prison for the six counts and also faces two perjury counts that will be tried separately.
The case has been among the most high profile cases to take place following the #MeToo movement, which saw the trials of producer Harvey Weinstein and singer R. Kelly.
During the trial’s closing arguments last week, a prosecutor said Maxwell was Epstein’s “partner in crime”.
Assistant US Attorney Alison Moe said: “Ghislaine Maxwell made her own choices. She committed crimes hand in hand with Jeffrey Epstein. She was a grown woman who knew exactly what she was doing.”
Maxwell’s attorneys argued she was being used as a scapegoat for Epstein during the trial and attempted to make the accounts of her four accusers non-credible.
They argued the accusers were motivated by money.
According to Reuters, Maxwell’s defence lawyer Bobbi Sternheim said, “Epstein’s death left a gaping hole in the pursuit of justice for many of these women.
He added: “She’s filling that hole and filling that empty chair.”
