Daniel Siad, the model recruiter whose name appears more than 2,000 times in the declassified Department of Justice Epstein files, was found dead at his home outside of Paris this week.
According to CNN, French deputy public prosecutor Marie-Céline Lawrysz of the Nanterre Judicial Court confirmed in on Wednesday (July 22) that Siad's body was found Monday evening at his home in Colombes, a north-west suburb of Paris. An autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of death.
Siad, 69, was an acquaintance of child sex offender and banker Jeffrey Epstein for roughly a decade. Siad was under investigation by French prosecutors specializing in human trafficking and faced allegations of rape and other offenses.
Following Epstein’s 2008 conviction on sex crimes, Siad continued associating with him and invited him to fashion events. The model recruiter told CNN in June that he “trusted” Epstein, who died by suicide in an Manhattan jail in August 2019, and believed that he was 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 when she was 20 years old in France in 1990, filed criminal allegations of rape and human trafficking against him in Paris earlier this year, per Al Jareeza.
"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 more than 10 years, Siad allegedly arranged for Epstein to meet international models to find candidates of sexual exploitation. In a 2018 email exchange, Siad told Epstein he was hunting for a "good looking young assistant."
After sending a photo and describing the woman as being “very polite” and having "potential," Epstein replied that the woman was "too old."
Siad's lawyer, Ménya Arab-Tigrine, maintained 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 is the second individual from the modeling world with documented alliance to Epstein that has died 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, which he had denied.
