Is Epstein a racketeering case? French probe widens after death of model scout

By James J. Devine

Daniel Siad died before French investigators questioned him, but prosecutors say their investigation will continue as newly released records renew scrutiny of the modeling agencies, recruiters, financiers and powerful associates who repeatedly intersected with Jeffrey Epstein over decades.

An independent researcher argues those connections should be examined as a potential racketeering enterprise — a theory that goes substantially beyond what prosecutors have established — but with President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer confirmed as Attorney General, it is doubtful that any American agency could conduct such a probe.

Despite the Epstein Files Transparency Act mandating full disclosure, the U.S. Department of Justice has withheld roughly 2.5 million of its 6 million investigative documents.

Millions of the released pages feature heavy redactions, missing internal prosecution decisions, and omitted records tied to prominent figures, sparking ongoing legal and congressional challenges.

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi and her successor, Todd Blanche, insist that no records were withheld or redacted “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary,” but the FBI internally circulated Epstein-related allegations that mention Trump in late July and early August 2025.

The death of a modeling scout whose extensive correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein placed him under investigation in France has ended the possibility of prosecuting him, but French authorities say it will not end their effort to identify others who may have participated in a broader system of human trafficking.

Daniel Siad, 69, was found dead July 20 at his home in Colombes, northwest of Paris, while investigators were examining allegations that he helped recruit women for Epstein and committed sexual offenses himself. Siad denied wrongdoing and had not been arrested or questioned before his death.

An autopsy subsequently found no evidence of recent violence connected to Siad’s death. Prosecutors said the examination revealed poor health and evidence of a previous heart attack but did not immediately establish a definitive cause of death; toxicology and pathology testing remained pending at the time of that announcement.

The far more consequential development may be what survives him.

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said the investigation opened Feb. 18 into organized human trafficking and criminal conspiracy would continue despite the termination of criminal proceedings against Siad.

The objective, she said, remains identifying “all individuals who may be implicated.” Since the investigation began, 24 women have come forward or been identified as potential victims or witnesses of conduct attributed to Siad or others.

That language is important.

French authorities are no longer merely asking what one dead modeling scout may have done.

They are asking who else was involved.

And that question reaches into a world in which modeling agencies, wealthy patrons, international travel, immigration sponsorship, luxury properties and powerful social connections repeatedly converged around Epstein.

A recruiter whose emails opened another window

Siad’s significance emerged dramatically after the U.S. Department of Justice released over 3.5 million pages of Epstein-related investigative records, including 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.

His name appeared nearly 2,000 times in the files. Emails and messages showed him discussing young women with Epstein, sometimes describing their nationality, appearance and age and offering photographs or introductions.

The Washington Post found that Siad was among a collection of modeling-industry figures who continued offering women introductions to Epstein even after his 2008 sex-crime conviction.

Siad traveled internationally scouting prospective models. Records reviewed by The Guardian showed messages in which he discussed looking for women in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and elsewhere, while Epstein periodically asked about women Siad had encountered.

Siad denied knowingly supplying victims to Epstein. He described his relationship with Epstein as professional and said he had never raped anyone.

Several women accused him otherwise.

Former Swedish model Ebba Karlsson accused Siad of raping her in Cannes in 1990 and later connecting her with Epstein.

Other women described alleged grooming, sexual violence or introductions into Epstein’s orbit. Siad denied those allegations.

His death therefore closes one avenue of criminal accountability without answering the larger question his records raised:

Was Siad an isolated associate who made introductions to a wealthy predator, or was he one piece of an organized recruiting infrastructure?

That question becomes harder to dismiss when Siad’s story is placed beside that of another Epstein-linked modeling agent, Jean-Luc Brunel.

Brunel, MC2 and a documented pipeline

Long before Siad became a focus of investigators, allegations had surrounded Brunel.

Women accused the French modeling agent of sexual abuse as early as the 1980s. Yet his career survived, and he eventually developed a close relationship with Epstein.

In 2005, Brunel transformed the U.S. operation of Karin Models into MC2 Model Management, with Epstein providing a $1 million line of credit, according to sworn testimony from former MC2 bookkeeper Maritza Vasquez.

Vasquez’s testimony went considerably further.

She said Epstein directly paid expenses associated with visas for models brought to the United States and that Brunel and models stayed in apartments connected to Epstein on East 66th Street in Manhattan. Some of the models were extraordinarily young, according to her account.

Virginia Giuffre later alleged in court papers that supposed modeling opportunities were used as a mechanism for recruiting vulnerable girls into Epstein’s world.

President Donald Trump claimed that Epstein “stole” Virginia Giuffre from him.

Brunel denied participating in sex trafficking or other criminal conduct.

French authorities arrested Brunel in 2020. He faced allegations involving rape and sexual assault before he was found dead in his prison cell in February 2022. He died before trial.

Now Siad has died before French investigators could question him.

The deaths do not themselves establish a conspiracy. French authorities reported no evidence of violence associated with Siad’s death, while Brunel’s death was ruled a suicide.

But the deaths have left investigators and survivors confronting an undeniable practical reality: two men who might have provided important testimony about the European side of Epstein’s modeling contacts can no longer answer questions.

A provocative RICO theory

Independent writer Olivia Rose has attempted to organize those connections into a much more sweeping hypothesis.

In a May 15 article titled “A RICO-Shaped Timeline of the Zampolli, Epstein, Maxwell and Trump Network,” Rose argues that what has conventionally been reported as separate scandals should instead be examined as a potentially interconnected enterprise.

Her central contention is striking: luxury real estate provided one mechanism for moving wealth, modeling agencies and immigration channels another for moving young women, and celebrity branding and political influence a third for protecting reputations and relationships.

Rose calls it a RICO theory — a reference to the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which permits prosecutors to attack an ongoing criminal enterprise by connecting a pattern of qualifying crimes rather than prosecuting each offense as an isolated event.

That characterization requires an important warning.

No court has found that the collection of people Rose identifies constituted a RICO enterprise, and the available public evidence does not establish that Donald Trump, Paolo Zampolli, Howard Lutnick or other people she discusses participated in Epstein’s sex-trafficking crimes.

Social relationships, business transactions, invitations, shared associates and appearances in records are not proof of criminal participation.

Rose’s article should therefore be understood as an investigative hypothesis — an argument about questions authorities should examine — rather than a statement of established criminal liability.

Still, several components underlying her theory are independently documented and warrant scrutiny.

The modeling world keeps appearing

One of those figures is Paolo Zampolli, the Italian-born modeling executive who recruited Melania Knauss, now Melania Trump, to work in New York and later introduced her to Donald Trump.

The basic immigration history is well documented.

Zampolli’s modeling company sponsored Knauss, who arrived in the United States on Aug. 27, 1996, initially under a B1/B2 visitor visa. She obtained an H-1B work visa on Oct. 18 of that year.

Associated Press reporting later uncovered accounting records indicating that Melania Trump had been paid for 10 modeling assignments totaling more than $20,000 during the weeks before she received authorization to work. Her representatives disputed implications that she had intentionally violated immigration law, while Zampolli said he could not remember the details two decades later.

Zampolli has long said he introduced Melania to Donald Trump at a 1998 Fashion Week party in New York.

Those facts establish a documented intersection among Trump, Zampolli, immigration sponsorship and the international modeling business.

They do not establish a trafficking operation.

But the wider modeling industry surrounding Epstein demonstrated how immigration status, debt, housing, employment dependence and international recruiting could create extraordinary vulnerabilities for young foreign models.

That is precisely why the parallels deserve investigation rather than exaggeration.

Trump Model Management and foreign labor

Donald Trump entered that same industry with Trump Model Management, founded in 1999.

The company’s immigration practices attracted scrutiny years before Epstein’s latest records were released.

Reuters reported in 2016 on a lawsuit brought by Jamaican model Alexia Palmer, who alleged that Trump Model Management made representations to the federal government regarding compensation for her work visa but paid her far less than the stated amount. Trump Model Management disputed the lawsuit, which did not establish that the agency was part of a trafficking organization.

The significance is therefore not that the existence of Trump’s modeling agency proves participation in Epstein’s crimes. It plainly does not.

The significance is that international modeling, immigration sponsorship, wealthy male clientele and the social world surrounding Epstein repeatedly occupied overlapping terrain.

That terrain deserves examination on evidence, not assumption.

Zampolli and Epstein

Rose also points to documented social intersections between Zampolli and Epstein.

Publicly available reporting and released records indicate that the two men’s circles overlapped and that Epstein had contacts with Zampolli’s modeling world. Zampolli has denied suggestions that he participated in Epstein’s criminal activity and has publicly rejected efforts to portray his relationship with Epstein as evidence of wrongdoing.

Those denials matter.

So does the historical context.

Epstein did not operate in isolation. He depended upon people who provided introductions, recruited employees and models, managed properties, arranged transportation, facilitated banking and maintained access to elite social environments.

Ghislaine Maxwell’s conviction established that at least one other person was criminally involved in recruiting and grooming minors for Epstein.

Brunel’s history established that Epstein financed a modeling agency whose former bookkeeper testified about visas and housing involving young foreign models.

Siad’s correspondence established that another modeling-industry figure repeatedly searched for and described young women to Epstein.

These are documented pieces.

Whether they belong to one criminal enterprise is another question entirely.

Real estate, money and proximity

Rose’s theory extends beyond modeling.

She argues that real estate should be examined as part of the financial architecture surrounding Epstein and his associates, highlighting Manhattan properties and transactions involving entities connected with Epstein or billionaire Leslie Wexner.

Again, property transactions — even unusual ones — do not by themselves establish money laundering.

That would require evidence about the origin of funds, beneficial ownership, intent, concealment and the purpose of particular transfers.

But Rose’s broader methodological point is worth taking seriously: investigators looking at Epstein solely as a sexual predator may miss information visible only when his financial, property, banking, immigration and recruiting networks are analyzed together.

Epstein’s ability to commit crimes for years was inseparable from wealth.

Mansions provided locations.

Aircraft provided mobility.

Money provided recruiters and employees.

Elite associations provided legitimacy.

Lawyers provided defenses.

Financial institutions moved funds.

And social prestige gave a convicted sex offender continued access to powerful people long after ordinary society should have shunned him.

Understanding the infrastructure does not make everyone who touched it a criminal.

But failing to study that infrastructure would make it impossible to understand how Epstein operated.

The distinction between a network and an enterprise

That distinction is crucial to any serious investigation.

A social network consists of people connected through friendship, business, employment, events, correspondence or mutual acquaintances.

A criminal enterprise requires much more.

A prosecutor pursuing a RICO theory would have to prove the existence of an enterprise and a pattern of specified criminal acts connected to it. A person’s mere association with Epstein would be insufficient. Prosecutors would need evidence tying particular defendants knowingly to criminal objectives and qualifying conduct.

That is where some of Rose’s rhetoric runs ahead of the publicly established record.

Her contention that real estate, modeling, trafficking, immigration, reputation management and government protection formed a single continuous criminal operation is provocative.

It is not yet proven.

But investigators do not need to accept the conclusion in order to ask whether the hypothesis reveals useful lines of inquiry.

The protection question

Perhaps the most politically explosive issue is not who attended which party.

It is why Epstein escaped serious accountability for so long.

That failure is beyond dispute.

After an extensive Palm Beach investigation involving numerous alleged victims, Epstein obtained an extraordinarily favorable federal nonprosecution agreement negotiated under then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta.

He pleaded guilty in Florida state court in 2008 to prostitution-related charges involving a minor and received treatment dramatically more lenient than would ordinarily be expected for conduct of such seriousness.

Years later, Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown’s “Perversion of Justice” investigation helped expose the breadth of the allegations and the failures surrounding the deal.

Federal prosecutors finally charged Epstein again in 2019.

He died in jail before trial.

Maxwell was subsequently prosecuted, convicted of sex-trafficking-related offenses and sentenced to prison.

The obvious historical question remains:

Why did accountability largely stop there?

The French investigation may provide another chance

That is why the continuing French inquiry matters.

The central fact emerging from Paris is not the death of Daniel Siad.

It is the prosecutor’s determination that his death does not close the case.

Investigators have already identified or heard from 24 women. Sixteen had been interviewed when prosecutors announced the continuation of the inquiry, with additional interviews planned.

French authorities have access to the enormous body of records released by the U.S. Justice Department and are using data-analysis tools to examine the material.

They are not investigating simply whether one modeling scout committed one crime against one woman.

They are investigating organized human trafficking and criminal conspiracy.

That creates the possibility — still only a possibility — that investigators may reconstruct relationships extending well beyond Siad.

Three dead men, one surviving question

Epstein is dead.

Brunel is dead.

Siad is dead.

That fact should encourage neither conspiracy fantasies nor institutional complacency.

There is no public evidence that the three deaths were connected or that Siad’s death involved foul play. Indeed, the autopsy found no signs of recent violence.

But death should not be allowed to become another mechanism by which investigations disappear.

Financial records do not die.

Emails do not die.

Flight logs do not die.

Property records do not die.

Immigration petitions do not die.

Bank transfers do not die.

Corporate records do not die.

And survivor testimony does not die simply because the men accused of abusing or exploiting women are no longer available for prosecution.

Rose’s RICO formulation may ultimately prove too broad. Some of the relationships she assembles may turn out to be incidental, irrelevant or entirely innocent. Other claims require far stronger corroboration before they should appear in any criminal allegation.

But she poses a question that conventional Epstein coverage too often avoided:

What happens if investigators stop treating every banker, recruiter, property, modeling agency, visa, social introduction and government failure as a separate story and instead map the entire system?

The answer should not be predetermined.

That is what investigations are for.

Perhaps the evidence would reveal multiple unrelated circles orbiting the same wealthy predator.

Perhaps it would identify additional individual facilitators.

Perhaps it would expose financial or immigration offenses unrelated to sex trafficking.

Or perhaps it would demonstrate that portions of what appeared to be an elite social network functioned in ways prosecutors could characterize as a criminal enterprise.

No responsible journalist can declare that conclusion in advance.

No responsible government should be afraid to find out.

For more than two decades, the Epstein story has repeatedly demonstrated what happens when institutions investigate narrowly, prosecute selectively and allow powerful connections to become background scenery.

Paris now has an opportunity to do something different.

Daniel Siad can no longer answer questions.

The records can.

And after Epstein, Maxwell, Brunel and now Siad, the question is no longer merely who committed the abuse.

It is whether investigators will finally determine who made the machinery possible, who knowingly kept it running and whether anyone with power helped prevent it from being dismantled.