Scott Borgerson updated his LinkedIn profile recently. Like many men of his age and narrow interests, the professional networking site is the American tech entrepeneur’s social media platform of choice. There, he can be found sharing articles about innovations in the global shipping industry, discussing untapped resources in the Arctic, and “liking” a seemingly ceaseless stream of motivational military memes. For a long time, the profile page of “Scott B” (as he describes himself) went relatively unchanged, such was the steadiness of his world. Not any more. Over his moody black-and-white headshot, a badge now reads: “OpenToWork”. No wonder – it isn’t every week you pledge $25m (some £18m) to free your infamous secret wife from prison in time for a family Christmas. After months of rumours, last week, 44-year-old Borgerson was finally unveiled to the world as the clandestine husband of Ghislaine Maxwell, the 58-year-old British socialite currently languishing in a detention centre in Brooklyn, New York, awaiting trial on charges of recruiting three teenage girls for the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell, who denies any wrongdoing, had long been suspected of having a secret man in her life before her arrest in July, but surprised even close friends when she told prosecutors she was married. At the time, Boston-based Borgerson, who had first been publicly linked to her the year before, became the chief suspect. Now, a bail application agreeing to a $22.5m (£16.6m) bond, with five additional bonds totalling $5m (£3.7m) co-signed by seven of Maxwell’s close friends and family, appears to confirm it. “The person described in the criminal charges is not the person we know. I have never witnessed anything close to inappropriate with Ghislaine,” Borgerson, who supposedly married Maxwell in 2016, wrote to US District Judge Alison Nathan. “Quite to the contrary, the Ghislaine I know is a wonderful and loving person.” Whether the plea works in time to release Maxwell for her 59th birthday on Christmas Day remains to be seen. Compared with almost everything else to do with Maxwell, Epstein and his murky web of high-profile connections that spans the past three decades, the story of how she met Borgerson at a conference seems almost refreshingly mundane. In 2012, six years after the first investigations into Epstein and four years after his first prison sentence, Maxwell founded an oceanic conservation company called the TerraMar Project, appointing herself as CEO and appearing at conventions all over the world in an attempt to relaunch herself as a philanthropic environmentalist. Nobody quite knew what Maxwell’s project did – it had no offices, gave no grants, and was disbanded last year – but given that isn’t all that unusual in the worlds of tech and conservation start-ups, she looked at home. Soon, she started to do what she’d always done best: charm powerful people and make connections. The Boston-based Borgerson was a natural target. As the multi-millionaire founder of maritime analytics company CargoMetrics, as well as a former visiting fellow for ocean governance at the Council on Foreign Relations, a powerful New York-based think tank, he was just the kind of associate she could do with if she wanted to be taken seriously on the high seas. They met, it has been reported, at the inaugural Arctic Circle assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 2013. Both spoke at the event, as well, evidently, as socialising – last week the first photograph of the pair together emerged, enjoying drinks at a reception. Maxwell, all pearls and Liza Minelli-esque haircut, beams as she poses with the 6ft 5in Borgerson. In his slightly ill-fitting navy business suit and wedding ring – at the time, he had been married to his first wife, Rebecca, for almost 12 years – he looks geekily pleased to have made a new friend.
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