EXPLAINER: Epstein's Model Scout Found Dead in France as a Rape Inquiry Closed In
Daniel Siad, 69, named in more than 1,000 Justice Department files and accused of rape and trafficking, died at his home outside Paris before French investigators could hear his account.
Summary:
Daniel Siad, 69, a French modelling scout who spent years recruiting women for Jeffrey Epstein, was found dead at his home near Paris on Monday evening.
He was under investigation by France’s human-trafficking prosecutors on accusations of rape and trafficking, and had not yet been questioned.
His name runs through more than 1,000 documents in the U.S. Justice Department’s Epstein files declassified this year.
An inquiry into the cause of death is open and an autopsy is planned.
His death forecloses the questioning French investigators had been building toward and removes a central figure from their widening inquiry into Epstein’s French network.
Warning: This report contains details of sexual assault.
DANIEL SIAD, the modelling scout who spent years steering young women toward Jeffrey Epstein, was found dead at his home outside Paris on Monday evening. He was 69.
Prosecutors in Nanterre have opened an inquiry into how he died, and an autopsy is planned. Siad had been under investigation by French prosecutors who specialise in human trafficking, accused of rape and other offences. He had not yet been questioned. He denied the accusations and had said he wanted to give his account.
His name runs through more than 1,000 documents in the Justice Department’s declassified Epstein files, released this year. He was one of several Frenchmen accused of helping Epstein find and abuse women.
For years Siad crossed the world in search of faces to sell—villages in eastern Europe, trips to Cuba and Sweden—sourcing women for the modelling industry and, in the same breath, women he thought Epstein might want to meet. He likened the work to fishing. Patience was the trade, he told Epstein in a 2014 email: “In This busyness (sic) I feel like fisherman some time I cache (sic) quick, some time no fish.”
The files show Siad among Epstein’s most loyal correspondents, in steady contact until months before the financier’s death and paid by wire, apparently for the cost of his travels to find women.
He was fixed in the modelling world’s upper rungs, scouting on commission for Jean-Luc Brunel, for more than four decades the dominant agent in Paris, New York and Miami. Brunel hanged himself in a French prison in February 2022, after 14 months in custody awaiting trial on charges of raping minors and sexual harassment, which he denied along with any part in Epstein’s trafficking. Epstein himself died in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
In a statement to reporters in February, Siad said he had believed he was supplying women for legitimate model castings in Paris. “He had a big apartment where he used to organise all his meetings, including casting for models I recruited, for Victoria’s Secret and MC2,” he wrote. The sessions, he said, “would not last more than 10 minutes,” and he “always left the place with the models immediately.”
The accusations that placed him under investigation came from women he had scouted. Ebba Karlsson, a former Swedish model, accused him of rape. She said he approached her in Stockholm in 1990, when she was a 20-year-old model, and later raped her in France. He used a different name then, she said, and she recognised him only when his face surfaced in coverage of the Epstein files. Karlsson, who never dealt with Epstein, filed criminal complaints of rape and human trafficking in Paris this year. Siad’s lawyer, Ménya Arab-Tigrine, said he denied the allegation.
Told of his death, Karlsson called it “very frustrating.”
“He was very close to being arrested,” she said.
“We worked so hard for this, trying to have justice.”
Siad’s emails gave Epstein a steady supply of detail about the women he was recruiting. “Slovakia is the right place to be,” he wrote in 2009, listing 45 women to see there, and said he would spend the summer scouting small villages across Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. “I will make you a great surprise when you come to Paris,” he promised. He was still at it in 2016: “Call me if you have time I am in Barcelona. With amazing Beauty.”
Epstein’s replies were clipped—“wht about new girls?,” “anything worth coming to paris for?,” “Any interesting women?” The women were logged by nationality more often than by name. “I am in ny, is the swedish girl here?” Epstein asked in June 2014. To some candidates he answered with a single word: “age?” Siad, for his part, liked to stress youth: “26 but she look 18,” he wrote of one.
Siad, who described himself as French-born, of Algerian origin and a Swedish citizen, told French television this year that Epstein had abused his trust and that he had been in no position to know the man was dangerous. His dealings with the models, he maintained, were purely professional.
“With time, one discovers that this individual committed atrocities; fortunately, I never introduced him to any minor or non-minor who was abused. I have nothing to reproach myself for,” he said.
The Justice Department files indicate the FBI was tipped to Siad’s work for Epstein in 2016. In February, French prosecutors assembled a team of magistrates to comb the files, which name several French nationals, Brunel among them.
Siad’s death forecloses the questioning French investigators had been building toward, and with it a route by which his accusers hoped to see the case tested in court. It thins the roster of living figures who can account for Epstein’s French network as prosecutors work through the files.
Help is available
In the United States, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673, text HOPE to 64673, or use RAINN’s 24/7 online chat. Internationally, UN Women points readers to helplines and the Chayn Global Directory, and The Pixel Project maintains worldwide resource pages, including rape and sexual assault support listings.
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So many dead bodies 🤔 Those soon to be questioned, about to testify or have first hand knowledge of the Epstein Pedophile Ring. Exactly why the survivors have been begging for ACTION for years, especially now since Blanche recently blew it by not redacting some of their names. It’s a twisted and dangerous situation these women and their families are facing. WE NEED CONGRESS TO ACTUALLY STOP THIS MADNESS NOW!!! Waaay overdue😡