Daniel Siad, the model recruiter whose name appears more than 2,000 times in the declassified Department of Justice Epstein files, has been found dead at his home near Paris this week.
According to CNN, French deputy public prosecutor Marie-Céline Lawrysz of the Nanterre Judicial Court confirmed on Wednesday (July 22) that Siad’s body was discovered Monday evening at his residence in Colombes, a north-western suburb of Paris. An autopsy is expected to be conducted to determine the cause of death.
Siad, 69, had known convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein for about a decade. He was under investigation by French authorities specializing in human trafficking and had faced allegations including rape and other offenses.
Even after Epstein’s 2008 sex crime conviction, Siad continued to maintain a relationship with him and invited him to fashion events. In June, Siad told CNN that he “trusted” Epstein, who died by suicide in a Manhattan jail in August 2019, describing him as a “professional person.”
“I never heard anything from anyone I introduced to him who came back to me that they had a bad situation,” Siad told the network.
Former Swedish model Ebba Karlsson, who accused Siad of raping her in France in 1990 when she was 20 years old, filed criminal complaints against him earlier this year alleging rape and human trafficking, according to Al Jazeera.
“It’s very frustrating. He was very close to be arrested. We worked so hard for this, trying to have justice,” Karlsson told AFP.
Over the course of more than a decade, Siad allegedly helped arrange meetings between Epstein and international models in an effort to identify potential victims of sexual exploitation. In a 2018 email exchange, Siad reportedly told Epstein he was searching for a “good looking young assistant.”
After Siad sent a photo and described the woman as being “very polite” and having “potential,” Epstein responded that the woman was “too old.”
Siad’s attorney, Ménya Arab-Tigrine, continued to maintain that her client was innocent in a statement.
“If he died of a heart attack, the unbearable waiting, the pressure and the anxiety he suffered every day will have had something to do with it,” she said.
Siad becomes the second person from the modeling industry with documented ties to Epstein to die suddenly in France. Jean-Luc Brunel, a prominent modeling agent who was also connected to Siad, died by suicide in prison in February 2022 while awaiting trial on charges of raping minors, allegations he had denied.
