Transcription
Ellen Maxwell was arrested on the 2nd of July 2020. Just two days prior, Reddit user Maxwell Hill, who was the 14th highest combined karma of all time, seemingly vanished from the internet. This is one of the many coincidences that have led some to wonder if Ghislaine is actually Maxwell Hill, and after seeing some of their posts, I wouldn't be surprised. Let's investigate.
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Ellen Maxwell was born in France in December 1961 and was raised in Oxford, England. Her father was Robert Maxwell, a British former MP, suspected spy, media tycoon, and fraudster, who died in November 1991, shortly before huge discrepancies in his company's finances were revealed. I could probably do a whole video on that guy's life and death, which some believe was suspicious. Let me know in the comments if you'd be interested.
Anyway, following the death of her father, Ghislaine was invited to the US by Jeffrey Epstein, and the pair eventually began a relationship. As you probably know, Jeffrey supposedly took his own life in prison on the 10th of August 2019, after being arrested on federal charges for the trafficking of minors. Though there is skepticism surrounding his cause of death, three weeks prior, he had been found unconscious in his cell with injuries to his neck. He said he believed his cellmate attacked him, though it was suspected that he had tried to unalive himself. Around the time he died, he wasn't supposed to be alone in his cell, and guards should have been checking on him every 30 minutes. However, his cellmate might have been transferred out the day before, and no one took his place. The two guards conveniently fell asleep, leaving Jeffrey unattended for around three hours, and the two cameras in front of his cell malfunctioned. He'd already been convicted in 2008 of soliciting and procuring a child for inappropriate acts, and numerous other allegations were made against him over the years that suggested he was operating a trafficking ring. It seems that Ghislaine helped him recruit, groom, and abuse girls, some as young as 14, and allowed other prominent figures to engage in inappropriate contact with them too. After details about her involvement with Jeffrey emerged in 2016, she kept a low profile and wasn't arrested until the 2nd of July 2020, the day after the FBI obtained a warrant to locate her. On the 29th of December 2021, she was convicted on five trafficking-related counts, including one of trafficking a minor, and she's due to be sentenced in June this year.
On the 12th of March 2006, almost exactly a year after the investigation into Jeffrey began, a Reddit account was created under the name Maxwell Hill. We'll call them Max, and it would go on to become one of the most successful users on the site. They were the first user to ever reach 1 million karma and have since amassed over 15 million karma, meaning they currently have the 12th highest link karma and the 14th highest combined karma of all time, despite being inactive for over a year and a half at this point. They were a moderator of the following subreddits: World News, Environment, Politics, Technology, Humor, Travel, Bad Cop No Donut, Cyber Laws, Enviro Action, and Greed, among others. They were a Reddit celebrity, if such a thing exists. They had articles written about them and made it to number one on Gizmodo's list of the 25 most viral people on the internet in 2011.
With great power comes great responsibility, though, and Max seemed more interested in their own content than actually running the subreddits they moderated. They were partly responsible for Technology and Politics being removed as default subreddits, as rather than do their mod job properly, they decided to rapidly add and remove a number of moderators, notably bringing back a controversial mod who was described as "poisonous rot that makes any team operate in a negative environment." This was after they had resorted to filtering out all posts with certain keywords, including "Maxwell Hill," though Max was still able to make posts with those words. It's worth noting that some users have claimed that they weren't able to block Max and that their posts still showed up if they tried to hide them, though I can't verify that. When it became clear that the mods of Technology were not working together for the sake of the community, the admins removed it from the defaults until the court could manage to look past their petty squabbles, add new moderators, and function as a team. Furthermore, Max was accused of deleting posts they disagreed with, banning people for criticizing them, even on subreddits they didn't moderate, and I even found a couple of doxxing allegations. Max posted so often on subs like World News that they controlled most of the narrative, and that could answer the question of why Ghislaine might bother wasting time on Reddit. Having such an influence could be useful.
Although Max was a controversial figure, they interacted on the site without arousing much suspicion until a couple of years ago, shortly after Ghislaine's arrest, when a post was made on 4chan suggesting that Max might actually be her. The most obvious similarity is the username, which is Ghislaine's surname plus "Hill," which could be a reference to Headington Hill Hall, her family's mansion in Oxford, or her father's surname at birth, "Hawk," which doesn't directly translate from German to "Hill" according to Google Translate, but is a name given to someone who lived in an area of high land. Alternatively, it could have been inspired by McGraw-Hill, the name of a company that Robert's company merged with years ago. This might seem a bit too on the nose, and you might wonder why Ghislaine would be stupid enough to use her own name for her Reddit account. For the most part, the posts made by Max were relatively inconspicuous. It's not like they were openly advocating for the abuse of children, and they weren't frequent in jailbait or any other questionable subreddits, at least on that account. The account was created nearly 16 years ago, too, and back then, people weren't quite as concerned about doxxing as they are today. It was still safer not to use your real name, but many did.
Anywhere, during the time that Ghislaine was laying low before her arrest, she changed her email, used a different name for deliveries, and registered a new phone number under the name Gmax. If that's her idea of a pseudonym, I certainly wouldn't be surprised if she used her surname for a Reddit account created so long ago. In 2007, Max said this in a comment: "I believe hiding your name defeats the purpose of being a Redditor. If you need to disguise yourself in order to hoard karma points, then you are better off not being part of the community because you can't seriously be enjoying yourself." That suggests that their username might be part of their real name, as they weren't openly giving a different name. But if they're not Ghislaine, they could literally just be called Maxwell Hill.
A few of their posts have been highlighted as topics that Ghislaine might post about, including comments about the age of consent in various countries and states and a link to an article giving three reasons why CP should be legal. Many of these have been taken out of context, though, and Max generally condemned people who have inappropriate contact with children. If this user is Ghislaine, it makes sense that she wouldn't openly admit to being a pedophile. They might share links like that to test the waters, engage where people stand on such topics. I wouldn't even be surprised if, in her mind, she made a distinction between herself and those who go for younger children, said five or six years old, because she trafficked girls who were 14 and older, so probably rationalized it in some messed-up way.
Some of the topics they posted about fit with Ghislaine's interests. For example, quite a few posts about ocean conservation, and Ghislaine founded an ocean charity. A few of their comments indicated they had knowledge on horse racing, and they spoke about the winners of races in 2016. Ghislaine has been photographed at the races before, and those are the kind of interests that an individual of her standing would stereotypically have. In 2010, Max left a comment describing one of their friends who was confined to a motorized wheelchair and has many other medical problems but takes them in his stride. They said he set up several successful small businesses, built a network of friends and business partners, and that women in particular like talking to him because he is attentive and holds a great conversation. Some have speculated that this might be about Stephen Hawking, who somewhat fits the description given by Max and also happened to have visited Epstein's island, so must have been at least acquaintances with Ghislaine.
Despite numerous posts about Donald Trump and other relevant news over the years, it seems that Max only mentioned Jeffrey Epstein a couple of times and, as far as I'm aware, never mentioned Ghislaine. Considering how big that news was, you'd think they would jump on that and link articles as soon as there were any updates. It would be a sure way to gain even more karma.
Gaps in the user's post history have also been highlighted, most notably the fact that they haven't posted since two days before Ghislaine was arrested. This also happened to be the date that around 2,000 subreddits that promoted hate based on identity or vulnerability were banned, including The Donald and Gender Critical. So it has alternatively been speculated that Max quit out of protest, as some other moderators did at the time. I don't see any reason why they would do that, though. They didn't frequent any of the banned subreddits; many of them were alt-right, and Max seemed to be left-leaning, considering they were accused of censoring content they didn't agree with on the subreddits they moderated. It wasn't exactly a bastion of free speech, either.
Other gaps include three days when Ghislaine's mother died in 2013 and during the time she attended a Clinique La Prairie party in 2011, where former Reddit CEO Helen Powell claimed on Twitter to have seen her. As a side note, Ellen's tweet is sometimes cited as proof that Ghislaine was in with the Reddit staff, but it wasn't a Reddit party, and this was before Ellen became the CEO. So unless I'm missing something, I don't see how it's got anything to do with Reddit staff. If anything, the tweet reflects badly on Clinique La Prairie, as Ellen claims they were aware of the allegations, but those who managed the guest list didn't seem to care. Anyway, contrary to what some Max truthers might have you believe, the user didn't post every single day. Besides these three events, there are other gaps, including one for over two weeks that hasn't been explained using one of Ghislaine's life events, and I couldn't find enough information on her exact whereabouts to make any links myself.
Max also posted on some days that Ghislaine was known to be at events. For example, on the day Ghislaine attended Chelsea Clinton's wedding in July 2010. Aside from the inactivity since Ghislaine's arrest, neither the gaps nor the posts on the days that Ghislaine was seen out in public do much to prove or disprove the theory, in my opinion. It makes sense that you'd be offline for a few days if your mother died, but there are many other reasons why you might take some time off, too, and it's not like being at an event would totally prevent you from spending any time on Reddit if you were using your phone.
Going off language and spelling used by Max, I would guess that they're British. For example, this film bomb as "mum," I mentioned in an Ask Me Anything years ago that their favorite word was "bollocks," and mentioned "sani" and "pantovia," all of which are common words in the UK. One exception I noticed is the word "color," which Max sometimes spells C-O-L-O-U-R, the British spelling, and other times C-O-L-O-R, the American spelling. They also made a lot of posts relevant to American culture. This would make sense if Ghislaine was Max, because she grew up in Britain and is also an American citizen. Max themselves claimed to have worked in the UK at one point, though, which might explain how they picked up some British lingo.
Other details they've given about themselves include that they're a 40-year-old man, which could be a red herring to avoid being identified, and so could the claim that they worked in Britain. Max once said that they were born in December after the 21st, which lines up with Ghislaine's birthday on the 25th of December. I'm not putting too much weight into anything they said about themselves, though, because there's a good chance that some of those things are true and some aren't, but we have no idea which bits are true and which aren't.
In July 2020, a mod shared a screenshot of his conversation with Max after the Ghislaine theory began circulating to prove that they were still active after Ghislaine's arrest. This is probably the most credible evidence against the theory, but it's not definitive. People can do Photoshop images all the time, and admins are able to send messages from any account, as far as I'm aware. So if they had a reason to want to make it look like Max isn't Ghislaine, they absolutely could have done that. That does sound a little far-fetched without any solid evidence, but it's not like the admins and various moderators haven't been known to enable shady behavior on the site. Check out my video on the jailbait subreddits for an example of that.
If Max really did send that message and was active in private subreddits as other mods claimed, why did they stop posting publicly? Had they continued on as normal, the theory wouldn't have taken off like it did. Yet, over a year and a half later, still nothing. That doesn't prove that they aren't Ghislaine. There are many other reasons why someone might become inactive, but aside from death, after so long on the site and considering their goal was to become influential on it, I can't see why they'd choose to abandon it. Thus, they instantly dismissed all this as a baseless conspiracy theory.
Don't believe that someone like Ghislaine would bother wasting time on Reddit. I don't see why not. It'd be silly to assume that no rich and famous people use Reddit, and without knowing Ghislaine personally, it's impossible to say whether she does or not. But the simple assertion that someone of her status definitely wouldn't adds nothing to the discussion. If she is Max, the amount of time she spent on Reddit is a bit surprising, but not impossible, especially considering she mostly just posted links for articles that she probably read anyway. She didn't comment much and, by all accounts, didn't spend much time actually moderating subreddits. Regardless, Ghislaine has described herself as an "internet operator" in the past. She just didn't specifically say she was a Reddit power mod. If she was, perhaps she just enjoys using the site. But as mentioned earlier, having such an influence on such a popular site could be used to her advantage. Her father was a media tycoon, and when his company merged with McGraw-Hill, it formed America's second-largest textbook publisher. So, in a way, her being a power mod would be following in his footsteps, especially considering Reddit and social media sites are increasingly replacing traditional news outlets.
Interestingly, when Max communicated via emails with Gizmodo, he made it clear they were actively trying to be number one on Reddit. Here are a few excerpts: "Then the top five Redditors left to work for Jason Calacanis and AOL paid to provide content. I saw an opportunity in the hole left by the top five, so I decided to focus my energy on becoming number one on Reddit. The advent of subreddits was great because they allowed me to hone in on a particular audience, but between digging up links and moderating, I was stretched thin. I just didn't have room to read and comment as much as I would like, hence my dismal comment karma. These days, I spend about three to four hours a day on Reddit. I'm also busy with a potential business venture that is taking a large part of my time, but I try to squeeze in the odd link when I have the time." That was in late 2011, and it might be worth pointing out that Ghislaine founded the Terramar Project in 2012. Could that have been the business venture that was taking up a lot of time?
So, we've covered some of the evidence on both sides, and while I'm not 100% convinced, there are enough similarities between Ghislaine and Max to make a somewhat compelling argument that they might be one and the same. Regardless, what's interesting about this is how set some individuals have been on making it known that Max isn't Ghislaine. Some have even been accused of lying about personal details to make the theory seem less credible. A World News mod claimed in a tweet that Max is a Malaysian man and that Maxwell Hill is the name of a place in Malaysia, not a reference to his name. Obviously, those details are impossible to verify because the user hasn't been publicly identified, but some of their posts over the years suggest that that might not be the case. The theory that they're British is backed up by the language and spelling we mentioned earlier, plus some obscure British references the user has made, like a 1980s Penguin biscuit advert. Additionally, they didn't know the names of some very popular Malaysian dishes, which would be unusual, and were informed by other Redditors, to which they replied, "Thanks, Malaysia, you guys rock," which doesn't exactly sound like something someone who is also from Malaysia would say. He said on more than one occasion that they had only visited Southeast Asia, replying to another comment with, "Right, I believe it's the same in Southeast Asian countries, especially the Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia, and when I visited those countries several years ago." They also posted a lot in the subreddit r/2xchromosomes. Not that men can't post there, but as the name suggests, it is a community centered around women, and the majority of members are women.
The World News mod was the same mod that posted a screenshot of their conversation with Max in July 2020 to show that they were still active. But if he intentionally lied about them being a Malaysian man, can we really blindly trust the screenshot? Another mod also tried to claim that Max was a Malaysian man on Reddit, then deleted their comments when others pointed out that that was unlikely. I don't know if they did intentionally lie or if they were just gullible and blindly believed what Max told them, but there doesn't appear to be anything to back up their claims. To me, it sounds like someone Googled "Maxwell Hill," discovered that it was a place in Malaysia, and tried to make it fit.
You can still find plenty of posts discussing the Ghislaine theory. I noticed quite a few from around the time it emerged have been removed by moderators. Most of the removed ones seemed to be either those that gained a lot of attention or that compiled the most comprehensive list of all the similarities. And a couple of the Redditors were suspended around the time they made the posts, too, though that might have been for other reasons. Take this one on r/Epstein, one of, if not the most popular at the time with nearly 25,000 upvotes and many awards. One of the mods pinned a comment implying that they believed the theory was possible, even though they weren't saying it was 100% true. They told people to stop reporting the post because they weren't taking it down, and yet it was taken down some time later. Another deleted post linked a comment from another mod, but when you click the link, you can see the post for a split second before the page suddenly redirects to "Something went wrong." This could be nothing, but I don't ever remember arriving at this page on Reddit before, especially after already seeing the post for a split second. Normally, either the post is removed, but the thread still exists, or the link is totally broken, and you see a page with the phrase "Sorry, there doesn't seem to be anything here." I've clicked it again and again, and the same happens each time, so it wasn't a one-time error. I also run into more problems than usual when trying to view deleted comments using Reveddit and other similar archives, for what that's worth.
All of this does seem suspicious, though. Some of it can be explained by mods and admins trying to prevent a witch hunt or doxxing. We've all seen how they can end. Before "Remember, we did it Reddit," I don't doubt that this user has received many angry and probably threatening messages, so it makes sense that they might delete posts that would encourage that. That doesn't explain why it appears that mods lied about who Max really is. More people got more involved than they normally would in a situation like this.
The reason I'm not totally sold on the cover-up theory, though, is a lack of clear motive for everyone involved. I guess it wouldn't look good on Reddit if it was confirmed that one of the most influential users was actually an infamous trafficker, but they could just claim they didn't know whether they did or not, as there isn't any solid evidence to prove any of this. Even if I could just about buy that the admins might pull something like that for some reason, there's even less reason for mods to go to such lengths and knowingly lie. Perhaps they know Ghislaine personally and are intentionally lying for her, but the World News mod, who tweeted about Max being a Malaysian man, did so from his personal Twitter account, not anonymously. I couldn't find anything that might suggest he knew her. People talk about things like this as if users who moderate a lot of subreddits must know the admins personally, and therefore, if the admins had a reason to cover up Max's true identity, they'd make sure the mods did too. We have to remember that mods aren't paid employees, and while I'm sure some of them have spoken to or perhaps even become acquaintances of admins, it's not like being a power mod automatically puts you up there with them, having secret meetings about how to hide a user's online persona. And the admins really gonna risk reaching out to moderators, confirming that Max is Ghislaine, and asking them to lie to cover it up, just assuming they won't have a problem doing so?
One final theory we still need to briefly address is that Ghislaine was responsible for the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. I remember hearing this a while back, but it has resurfaced again in discussions about Max. There isn't really any evidence backing this up. Ghislaine just happens to look a lot like a police sketch of a suspect involved in the abduction. I highly doubt she was involved. Just because she's a trafficker doesn't mean she's involved in all high-profile abductions, and as far as is publicly known, she didn't interact with girls younger than 14. Madeleine was only three when she disappeared. Max didn't post on the day of the disappearance, though it's not confirmed that they aren't Ghislaine, and there are a million other things they could have been doing instead of posting on Reddit, other than kidnapping a child. So, overall, I'd have to dismiss that theory.
As for the rest, there's a decent amount of circumstantial evidence, and while I'm not a hundred percent convinced, I think it's plausible that Max could be Ghislaine. It could still turn out that this evidence is just coincidental. Perhaps the real Max just thought it'd be funny to let the conspiracies run wild, which were almost definitely exacerbated by the fact that Max was a controversial figure on Reddit. It's even been suggested that the whole theory was made up by users who oppose Max and their views, but even if they made a point of spreading it and misrepresented certain pieces of information, you can dig through Max's post history and find most of the similarities yourself.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts in the comments. Do you think Maxwell Hill is Ghislaine? And if so, do you think she had an agenda behind wanting to be the top user on Reddit? If you enjoyed the video, please consider liking and subscribing. Huge thank you to my patrons whose names are on screen now. I really appreciate your support. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next Thursday in a new video.
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