In August 2025, a claim (archived) circulated online that a federal prison in Texas cleared convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell, an associate of deceased financier and fellow convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, to leave the facility on work release. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years after she was found guilty of multiple charges including sex trafficking of a minor.
Allison Gill, a former government employee and the founder and CEO of MSW Media, Inc., a podcast network of independent creators, wrote on Bluesky: "NEW: In addition to her sex offender waiver, Ghislaine Maxwell has an 'out' designation that would allow her to leave the facility for work assignments."
NEW: In addition to her sex offender waiver, Ghislaine Maxwell has an "out" designation that would allow her to leave the facility for work assignments. Some work assignments for FPC Bryan inmates are at Texas A&M University which is just 6 miles away. My latest: open.substack.com/pub/muellers...
[image or embed]— Mueller, She Wrote (@muellershewrote.com) August 12, 2025 at 4:20 PM
The claim originated on Gill's Substack blog (archived).
According to that blog post, Gill received proof from an anonymous source of Maxwell's "security score, custody level, transfer code, public safety factor, and sex offender waiver." That information included Maxwell's custody level, which reportedly allowed her to leave the prison on work release.
The claim also circulated on X (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), Reddit (archived) and TikTok (archived). Snopes readers wrote in asking if the claim was true.
However, though Snopes could not independently verify the screenshots in Gill's blog post, according to BOP policy Maxwell likely did have permission to work outside the prison walls at FPC Bryan. Maxwell transferred to the minimum security prison on Aug. 1, 2025. According to BOP policy (Page 10), those prisons only house inmates with two types of custody levels, Community and Out, both of which permit leaving the facility's secure perimeter to work (Pages 12, 15).
Snopes doesn't rely on anonymous sources in our reporting and could not independently locate or vet the source that sent Gill the information about Maxwell's alleged confinement conditions. Gill told Snopes she viewed Maxwell's records herself and verified her source's identity as a person who would have been able to access them but could not share more information.
A spokesperson from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the agency responsible for federal prisons and the care of inmates in the U.S., said via email on Aug. 13 that the bureau "cannot vouch for the authenticity of the documents." The spokesperson added, "For privacy, safety, and security reasons, we do not discuss the conditions of confinement for any incarcerated individual."
We reached out to Maxwell's lawyer, David Oscar Marcus, to ask if he could authenticate the information in Gill's screenshots and await a reply.
Parsing BOP's custody levels
The screenshots in Gill's blog post reflected a variety of information about Maxwell, some of which was publicly available. The information in the screenshots mirrored the type of information normally provided on a custody classification form, a form the BOP used to determine the level of supervision an inmate needed — in practice, the form specifies what level of security prison an inmate could go to.
For example, news media widely reported Maxwell's conviction and sentence in 2022 and her move from FCI Tallahassee, a low-security prison, to FCP Bryan, a minimum-security prison, on Aug. 1.
That move came a week after Maxwell met with Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche in July 2025. Former BOP employees criticized the move. One told NBC it was a "travesty of justice."
Others pointed out that it was extremely rare for a convicted sex offender to obtain the sort of waiver Maxwell got that made her move possible.
Likewise, the BOP's custody classification policy was publicly available. Those guidelines dictate which inmates could be housed at what types of prisons.
The screenshots in Gill's blog post claimed Maxwell had a Public Safety Factor (PSF), which the BOP assigns to inmates based on convictions and behavior, of sex offender. According to BOP policy (Page 51), an inmate with a PSF of sex offender "will be housed in at least a Low security level institution."
However, also according to BOP policy (Page 44), the Chief of the Designation and Sentence Computation Center (DSCC Administrator) could apply a Management Variable "when placement has been made and/or maintained at an institution level inconsistent with the inmate's scored security level." One of these variables (Page 47) was "PSF waived." According to the screenshots in Gill's blog post and reporting that predated this, Maxwell got this waiver and consequently managed to transfer to a minimum security prison despite her sex offender PSF.
The screenshots in Gill's blog post also claimed Maxwell had a custody level of "Out."
The BOP states (Page 15), "An inmate who has OUT custody may be assigned to less secure housing and may be eligible for work details outside the institution's secure perimeter with a minimum of two-hour intermittent staff supervision."
According to BOP policy (Page 10), minimum security prisons could house prisoners with Community or Out levels of custody, with Community being the lowest level of supervision.
Given that FPC Bryan is a minimum security prison, according to BOP policy, Maxwell must have one of these levels of custody. Both allow leaving the prison for work.
In sum ...
While Gill's screenshots did reflect some correct and publicly available knowledge about Maxwell's case, Snopes could not independently verify that the specific screenshots authentically showed Maxwell's BOP records. The BOP said it could not vouch for the screenshots' authenticity.
However, according to the agency's own policy, Maxwell could have one of two levels of custody at FPC Bryan, both of which allowed work outside the prison's secure perimeter. Gill reported she had no proof that Maxwell had undertaken work outside FPC Bryan. Snopes also found no evidence that Maxwell had left the prison for work at the time of this writing.