Scott Borgerson: Who is Ghislaine Maxwell’s secret husband who ended marriage via prison phone call?

Disgraced British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell has been convicted of helping American financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls. The 60-year-old was found guilty of five out of the six charges in her trial, including sex trafficking a minor.

While she awaits sentencing, we take a look at her reported secret husband who did not attend her trial and allegedly ended their relationship via a prison phone call.

Millionaire tech CEO and ex-military officer Scott Borgerson, 44, who is rumoured to be “very connected” to the Trump administration, was pictured with a possible new girlfriend in his quaint Massachusetts town, Manchester-by-the-Sea, last month while his wife was on trial in New York.

Pictures of Borgerson and his likely new flame emerged in November and she has since been identified as Kris McGinn, a 49-year-old journalist, mother-of-two and yoga enthusiast who writes for Manchester's local paper.

The tech founder may have moved on romantically but reports suggest he and Maxwell, 59, are still married — on paper at least. It has emerged that Borgerson ended their relationship during a prison phone call before the trial began in late November. A source told The Mail on Sunday: “There was a dramatic phone call between them, while she was in jail in solitary confinement. It became confrontational. Scott told her he had moved on and was seeing someone else.”

Maxwell and Borgerson reportedly wed in 2016 and details of their marriage emerged in July 2020, the year after Epstein’s death, when court papers supporting her bail application indicated that she transferred all her assets to a trust controlled by him. She later told court chiefs that she had attempted to file for a divorce ahead of her arrest, so that her husband wouldn’t suffer from “being associated with her”.

Maxwell has refused to reveal her spouse’s identity, but that year the New York Times speculated that it was likely to be Borgerson, who is 14 years younger than her and shares an interest in ocean preservation. No record has been found of their marriage and Borgerson continues to deny that they ever dated, calling her “wonderful and loving” while claiming they are just old friends.

So who is he and how did he and Maxwell meet? This is everything we know about the socialite’s reported secret husband.

Who is he?

Until recently, Borgerson was the chief executive of CargoMetrics, a Boston-based data-analytics company for maritime trade and shipping that he founded in 2010. The company was valued at $100million (£76m) last year, but the 44-year-old recently resigned, explaining in a statement that it was to “ensure his presence would not become a distraction from the work he believes in so deeply”.

He reportedly lives in a sprawling £2.3 million ocean-front mansion in Massachusetts - more than 1,000 miles from rural Missouri where he grew up. The son of a marine infantry official and a languages teacher, Borgerson once said in a profile interview he considered becoming a priest but later chose to attend the US Coast Guard Academy.

He went on to earn a masters in law and diplomacy from Tufts University, before teaching history at the Coast Guard Academy (according to the documentary Epstein’s Shadow, he was “very connected” to the Trump administration).

According to the New York Times, in 2007, Borgerson became a fellow in residence at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in 2007, writing about oceanic issues. Philanthropist David Rockefeller and former Bill Clinton secretary Robert Rubin are among the think tank’s former officers and directors.

How did he meet Ghislaine Maxwell?

Maxwell and Borgerson are believed to have met more than eight years ago, through events connected to their mutual interest in ocean preservation. They pictured smiling together while speaking at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Iceland in 2013.

The CEO was still married to his ex-wife Rebecca at the time, but they divorced in 2015 after she reportedly discovered his affair with Maxwell (according to the Daily Mail, he told her he was flying to London to give a speech but she discovered he was in Miami with Maxwell).

Rebecca now lives in the next town from Borgerson with their two children, a 13-year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter.

According to friends of Maxwell’s, she and Borgerson began sharing a 6,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom seafront home in Manchester-by-the-Sea after Maxwell sold her 7,000-square-foot townhouse on the Upper East Side for about $15 million in 2016. Neighbors said that while Maxwell “rarely ventured out” of the house, Borgerson was often spotted walking her dog.

Three years later, in 2019, Maxwell reportedly bought a $1.07 million mansion in Bedford, New Hampshire, about an hour away from her home with Borgerson - a sign there were cracks in their relationship? The FBI arrested her there in an early-morning raid in July last year.

Little is known about Maxwell’s relationship with Borgerson but reports suggest that she believed her association with the maritime expert added to her credibility. However, according to a source quoted in the New York Times, she was smitten with Borgerson, calling him “hot” and “brilliant”.

Meanwhile, he has since described her as “wonderful and loving”, despite denying they were ever in a relationship together. “I have never witnessed anything close to inappropriate with Ghislaine,” he wrote in a letter to the court in Maxwell’s unsuccessful bail application last year. “The Ghislaine I know is a wonderful and loving person. I believe Ghislaine had nothing to do with Epstein’s crimes.”

Who is his new girlfriend?

According to locals in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Borgerson has rarely been seen around the town since Maxwell’s arrest in 2020. He has not appeared in court in New York to support her trial, but he was recently photographed in his seaside town with Kris McGinn, who he is reportedly dating after she recently divorced from her husband.

Yoga enthusiast McGinn reportedly has two children with her ex-husband and works for local newspaper Manchester Cricket, writing about food and cultural trends.

Borgerson refused to answer reporters’ questions last month, speeding off in an electric car. Meanwhile McGinn has also refused to confirm or deny a relationship with Borgerson when approached by newspapers. Given his links with the disgraced heiress, it’s not difficult to see why.