French model recruiter Daniel Siad, who had ties to the late American convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, was found dead at his home outside Paris on Monday evening. As prosecutors broke the news on Wednesday, they revealed that the 69-year-old man’s cause of death had yet to be determined.
In addition to his past link with Epstein, Siad had come under fire after at least five women accused him of rape and human trafficking, according to French media. The model recruiter denied those allegations. Daniel Siad’s name particularly gained more recognition in infamy after it appeared more than 2,000 times in the US Justice Department’s Epstein files library following the approval of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, as per CNN affiliate BFMTV’s analysis.
Siad has emerged as the second man with public links to Epstein to have died in France. Modelling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who was arrested in 2020 over allegations he procured women for the American financier, was found hanged in his prison in 2022 after spending over a year in custody amid a pending trial on charges of rape of minors and sexual harassment. Like Siad, he denied the charges and claimed that he participated in Epstein’s sex trafficking.
What do we know about Daniel Siad?
Marie-Céline Lawrysz, deputy public prosecutor at the Nanterre Judicial Court, told CNN in a Wednesday statement that Daniel Siad’s body was found in his home in Colombes, a northwestern suburb of Paris. An autopsy is scheduled to be performed on his body.
His lawyer, Meyna Arab-Tigrine, said, “Daniel Siad never stopped proclaiming his innocence,” in reference to charges of misconduct against him, according to Reuters. Despite accepting his connection with Epstein, who was accused of running a sex-trafficking ring, in the past, Siad denied any wrongdoing in association with the disgraced financier.
In her Wednesday statement, Arab-Tigrine doubled down that Siad had been willing to “subject himself to the gruelling media spotlight…to see the truth come to light.”
In a broadcast interview in May, Siad disclosed that he had worked as a model scout for 30 years and that he was first introduced to Epstein in the early 2000s. Asserting at the time that his relationship with the convicted paedophile was “strictly professional,” he admitted to having connected Epstein to about a dozen models for over 15 years.
In February, Laure Beccuau, the chief Paris prosecutor, said Siad was “one of the people who could be questioned” as part of a larger probe into people who had ties with Epstein. Issuing a statement on Wednesday after the news of Siad’s passing came into focus, Beccuau said that the investigation will continue “to identify all individuals who may be implicated” regardless of the Epstein-linked model scout’s death.
International reports show that 20 women have so far come forward or been identified after prosecutors reviewed information linked to the broader Epstein-related probe launched in February. Prosecutors, however, said that they hadn’t chanced upon enough evidence to arrest Siad, who has otherwise been at the centre of several complaints, including those accusing him of rape.
Prosecutors said elsewhere earlier this year that they had received a complaint from a former model named Ebba P Karlsson, a Swedish woman, who had accused Siad of subjecting her to “sexual acts that she describes as rape” in 1990 in France.
Additionally, she wrote on a website she co-founded to publicly release testimonies from abuse survivors that Siad “raped” her in “sexual acts that she describes as rape.”
Model scout Daniel Siad has been mentioned in Epstein Files
Files released by DOJ in January indicate that Siad had regularly been in contact with Epstein for about a decade. Among the more than 2,000 times he was mentioned in the so-called files, Siad shared photos of young women he came across during his travels with Epstein. Some of these pictures captured the women in a provocative light.
According to the DOJ files, their exchanges over text suggested that the French man often attempted to connect the late American high-profiler with individuals he described as female models. One of those women mentioned in the documented conversations between the two men is believed to have been a 15-year-old while others were under 18.
“Cute French girl in Marrakesh… She said that she will (be) happy to meet you,” Siad wrote in a message included in the Epstein Files readily accessible on the official US Department of Justice website.
Other files included in DOJ’s ‘Epstein Library’ show that the financier paid tens of thousands of dollars to Siad.
A 2018 email conversation suggested that the model scout was helping find a “good looking young assistant” for Epstein. Another message captured him sending a woman’s photo to Epstein, while describing her as someone with “potential” as a “model” or “assistant.” However, Epstein rebutted, replying, “Too old.”
An Epstein survivor told the BBC previously that Siad introduced her to Epstein, adding, “It was a complete set-up.” She described the modelling scout as “essentially a professional trafficker” in the interview.
The late modelling industry insider continued to pursue business ventures with Epstein even after his 2008 conviction on sex crimes.
According to CNN, Siad claimed Epstein took him into confidence to assure him that he had paid for his crime and “this would never happen with anybody,” referring to people Siad may connect Epstein with. The French man even believed that Epstein was a casting director for Victoria’s Secret and the modelling agency MC2, claims that haven’t been backed by any evidence.
“I trusted him and believed this guy was a professional person,” Siad said in a CNN interview in June. “I never heard anything from anyone I introduced to him who came back to me that they had a bad situation. I believed this guy is a professional person.”
