Another key Epstein associate takes crucial answers to the grave

What do the Epstein files reveal about Daniel Siad, the 69-year-old who was found dead of unestablished causes in his home northwest of Paris this week?Siad worked with Jeffrey Epstein for at least a decade across the 2000s and 2010s, according to the documents amassed during investigations into the late paedophile and released by the US department of justice between December 2025 and March this year. Siad’s name features in roughly 2,000 records, mostly emails, Skype and WhatsApp messages retrieved in searches of Epstein’s devices.Siad would send Epstein photos of young women, often alongside their age and body measurements, and Epstein would reply soliciting more.READ MOREThe wealthy financier was blunt and his requirements precise: “cute”, “looks a little heavy”, “age?”, “she is nice her boobs are awful. they will have to be redone”.Siad sought suitable “girls” for Epstein in Bangkok, Morocco, Paris, Stockholm, Riga, Cape Town, Havana, Ko Samui, and in “small villages” in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, according to the records.Daniel Siad, a model scout who repeatedly introduced Jeffrey Epstein to young women. He was found dead in a house near Paris earlier in July. Photograph: US department of justice An Algerian-born, French-Swedish citizen who described himself as a “Berber Jew” and also used the name Amar, Siad would organise “castings” to get photos of candidates for Epstein. He would represent himself as working for “FashionhdTV” or “whatsupmanagement.com” and liked to work alongside a woman.“It’s always easier when there is a girl around,” Siad wrote to Epstein in 2017.Siad would ask women if they were interested in opportunities in New York, and would arrange travel and accommodation, the records show. He sent messages asking Epstein to confirm if women had arrived on location. “JEFFREY SHE DOWN WATING” [sic] Siad messaged Epstein in 2014. “NOTBODY TO OPEN FOR HER.”A young woman whose name was insufficiently redacted in the records confirmed to The Irish Times that she had been approached by Siad as she left a model casting event in 2014. Siad told her he represented a New York modelling agency and gave her his card, saying he could connect her with opportunities. He asked her to send him her photographs and body measurements. When she did so, without her knowledge Siad forwarded them to Epstein.“Nice French girl who would like to try her chance in NY in modeling and acting,” Siad wrote.Their contact ended after Siad later invited her to dinner, and she “politely declined”, according to the woman.Victims were made to feel indebted and believed that Maxwell and Epstein were trying to help them— US Attorney for the Southern District of New YorkIn return for this work, Siad received payments: €3,000 a month at one point, plus a 5 per cent commission on the future earnings of the women he found, according to one email. He provided details to receive payments into bank accounts in Sweden, Dubai and Thailand. The transfers from Epstein sometimes ran into issues with anti-moneylaundering checks, the records show. Siad ultimately opened a company in Dubai, to which Epstein instructed his accountant to make out a $25,000 loan.The young women who were scouted were typically aspiring models with few financial resources, aged in their late teens or early 20s, the emails suggest. One was working as a chef, another a waitress, and several were students, according to the emails. Epstein made payments to them to cover tuition fees, dentistry, or plastic surgery.Juliette G, a former French model who shared her story with French media, said Siad and Epstein used “manipulation” to gradually test her boundaries and create a feeling that she was indebted.She was approached by Siad on the Champs-Élysées in Paris in 2004 when she was aged 21, and asked if she was a model and whether she would be interested in working in the United States. [ Epstein links to corporate America are even wider than investors realiseOpens in new window ]Siad got her a plane ticket to New York and told her to go to an address on Madison Avenue, where she found Epstein. He took away her passport for “administrative” reasons and gave her $120, offering her his limousine to go shopping and telling her to come back the next day.When she returned he took her on a tour of the building that ended up in a bedroom. “I need to you undress, so that I can know whether you are ready to be introduced to the agencies,” Juliette remembers Epstein telling her. He inspected her body, and told her she wasn’t yet sufficiently in shape, but that in the meantime he could offer her work as a private air hostess or as an escort.US department of justice files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Photograph: Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images “That raised every red flag in my mind, and I told myself this isn’t normal, I’m getting out of here,” Juliette recalled. She refused to leave without her passport, and remembers Epstein finally giving it back to her after searching through a “pile of about 20 passports” in his office.Epstein pled guilty to soliciting minors into prostitution in 2008 after investigators established that between 1994 and 2004 he had paid schoolgirls as young as 14 to give him massages that turned sexual, recruiting them with the help of his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.“Victims were made to feel indebted and believed that Maxwell and Epstein were trying to help them,” the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York said in a statement after Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison for her role.Messages between Epstein and young women whom investigators have categorised together with Siad’s introductions indicate the same modus operandi: Epstein would make them feel indebted and pressure them to find him new “girls” in turn.Emails show Epstein accusing women whose names are redacted of being insufficiently grateful, or of asking too much of him.“Frankly there are others that are much more open, try hard and actually deliver ... you tell me you don’t know any girls,” Epstein wrote in a chain of messages to a young woman that is interspersed with separate messages from Siad sending him photos of new girls he had found.“Makes me so sad to think u never wanna see me again. I have failed on many things, like finding a girl,” the woman, whose name is redacted, replied. “I want to make up for it, with doing stuff together with one of the other girls and you, is that now what you want aswell” [sic].The files show Siad worked together with Jean-Luc Brunel, a model scout who also founded an agency with money from Epstein. Jean-Luc Brunel, a model scout who featured in the Epstein files. Photograph: US department of justice However, the two appear to have fallen out, with Siad accusing Brunel by email of failing to pay him his commission on girls he had procured.Brunel told US investigators that Siad was a “scout” for Epstein and passed them his contact details in 2016, the records show.Brunel was found hanged in his cell in prison in France in 2022 while under investigation for the rape of minors and trafficking of minors for sexual exploitation.Epstein was found hanged in his cell in New York in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking.Siad had been a person of interest in an investigation related to “organised human trafficking” that opened in February this year, according to the Paris prosecutors’ office, which said investigations would continue.Siad had yet to be interviewed by authorities.[ Jeffrey Epstein continues to haunt Donald TrumpOpens in new window ]“Daniel Siad was subject to special investigative techniques, notably telephone surveillance, but they did not provide enough evidence justifying his immediate arrest,” the Paris prosecutors said.Initial autopsy results have not established a cause of death, according to the office of the public prosecutor of Nanterre, which said further test results were awaited.Former Swedish model Ebba Karlsson, who has accused Siad of rape, told French news agency AFP that Siad’s death was “very frustrating” as he “was very close to be arrested. We worked so hard for this, trying to have justice”.The Innocence in Danger project, which represents several Epstein victims, announced it would sue the French state for “denial of justice” due to “excessive and unjustified procedural delays”.Juliette G told French television it was a “disgrace”. “Daniel Siad died along with any information he might have had,” she said. “Too much time has been wasted.”Siad’s lawyer Menya Arab-Tigrine told media that her client had asked to speak to prosecutors to clear his name several times. “Daniel Siad never stopped proclaiming his innocence,” she said.