Whither Sarah Ferguson? Traces of her once-big business ambitions offer no clue

In March 2010, Sarah Ferguson filed papers with the US trademark office outlining her ambitions for a charity and various private enterprises to support mothers around the world. She signed the paperwork “Sarah, creator of mothers army”.

Filings seen by The Observer reveal Ferguson’s grandiose ambitions more than a decade ago for a global organisation, with her at the head in a role she later described as a “bossy general”.

The US Department of Justice documents concerning Jeffrey Epstein released earlier this year reveal it was the paedophile financier who had first suggested the venture while in prison for procuring a minor for prostitution. It was proposed he would be the majority owner.

The planned launch of Mothers Army was abandoned, the trademark lapsed, and the UK business once based at Ferguson’s former residence Royal Lodge, in Windsor Great Park, has been shut down. It was one of several ventures spawned by Ferguson’s ambitions for a business and charitable empire.

Most of these ventures are now shuttered in the fallout from the Epstein scandal. Seven of her UK-based firms were voluntarily struck off the UK company register in May, including the firm Loonasol, which proposed to sell fine linens under a brand called the “Duchess Collection”.

Ferguson’s charity Sarah’s Trust, a grant-giving body which aims to fight poverty, was removed by application from the register of charities on 8 June, with funds transferred to the Humanitas charity which delivers global healthcare programmes.

Thousands of copies of Ferguson’s children’s book Flora & Fern: Kindness Along the Way were pulped last year, with book signings cancelled across the UK. The book credited Ferguson as the “Duchess of York”, a title she lost last year when Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor relinquished the dukedom.

The last known engagement Ferguson attended was the christening of Princess Beatrice’s daughter Athena at St James’s Palace in December. Ferguson has not posted on her Instagram and Facebook accounts since the publication last September of a 2011 email to Epstein describing him as a “supreme friend”.

Royal reporters have compared trying to establish Ferguson’s location in recent months to Where’s Wally, the search for the cartoon character with the striped shirt.

“Where’s Fergie?” the Sun’s royal editor Matt Wilkinson said on a podcast for Hello! magazine in March. “It’s amazing that as famous as you are, you can find a way to hide away.”

Her claimed whereabouts have included a spa in County Donegal, in north-western Ireland; a wellness clinic in Zurich; and a friend’s chalet in Verbier. A spokesperson for Priscilla Presley denied reports in March that Ferguson was a secret lodger in her Los Angeles home.

Ferguson was finally tracked down by the Sun in April to a health resort in the Austrian Alpine village of Altaussee. She was photographed wearing glasses, with her hair tucked under a white baseball cap. The newspaper reported she had checked into room 101, the torture cell where characters face their worst fears in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

There has not been another reported sighting since then, but Ferguson still has a network of rich friends who she can turn to. She is said to be in regular contact with her two daughters. Those who know her say it will take time to reflect on the damage to her reputation and commercial interests caused by the Epstein scandal.

The party planner and socialite Liz Brewer, who knows Ferguson, said she was a considerate and kind person, but was too easily impressed by Epstein and his wealth. “He was brilliant at converting people into friends and not letting on what he was really up to,” Brewer said. “She was taken in by the money and the glamour.”

Since her divorce from Mountbatten Windsor in 1996, Ferguson worked hard to generate the income to support her lifestyle, such as with her November 1996 biography My Story; an endorsement deal with Weight Watchers; and a series of children’s books.

Her sizeable earnings never matched her outgoings and by the time she was hoping to set up Mothers Army she was on the brink of bankruptcy. Hartmoor LLC, a US-based company set up to promote her brand, collapsed in 2009 with debts of more than £600,000.

Ferguson has admitted that she had accepted £15,000 from Epstein in 2010 to pay the unpaid wages and bills of a former personal assistant. She described the decision to accept the money as a “gigantic error of judgment”.

Epstein also provided advice to Ferguson on various business ventures, including Mothers Army. He suggested Ferguson should set up the organisation, with sponsorship, “coupons for baby products” and educational toys. It was also proposed it would be an umbrella organisation for all her activities.

While plans for the organisation were abandoned, Ferguson avoided bankruptcy and was successful in forging charitable and business ventures across the world. Some of the ventures she supported ended in controversy.

She was paid a reported £200,000 to promote a scheme to use solar power generators to mine Bitcoin in the Arizona desert. The project later faced legal action from investors who were concerned at the lack of progress on the project.

Ferguson also promoted the lifestyle app vVoosh, which was founded by a close friend. The app was backed by more than £1m in government funding in research and development tax credits, but collapsed without launching a product.

There are now only remnants of her once expansive business interests. She has published about 70 books, with her historical romances still available on Amazon.

Ferguson faced a previous professional disaster when she was exposed by News of the World in May 2010 offering access to Mountbatten-Windsor in return for £500,000. Ferguson said the meeting was a “lapse in judgment” and her business career recovered.

Andrew Lownie, the author of Entitled: the Rise & Fall of the House of York, said Ferguson would already be plotting a comeback. “She describes herself as a fighter,” he said. “She is good at reinventing herself and she will find a way of coming back.”

Ferguson has been contacted for comment.

Photographs by Mark Cuthbert/UK Press, Avatarmin/Getty Images, Sarah Ferguson on Instagram