Model Scout With Close Epstein Links Found Dead

A longtime model scout with deep ties to Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead outside Paris. Daniel Siad, whose name appears more than 2,000 times in US Justice Department files related to the sex offender, was discovered at his home in the suburb of Colombes on Monday, a Nanterre deputy prosecutor said. An autopsy on the 69-year-old is pending. CNN reports that according to DOJ documents, Siad spent more than a decade steering young women toward Epstein, who paid him tens of thousands of dollars.

• He traveled the world seeking young women to work in the modeling industry and sent Epstein details of women and girls he might want to meet, the Guardian reports. In a 2009 email, he told Epstein he planned to spend the summer "scouting small villages" in Slovakia and other Eastern European countries.

• Messages show Siad sending Epstein photos of women in the years after the financier's sex-crime conviction, saying he was looking for a "good looking young assistant" for Epstein, who rejected one candidate as "too old." Siad messaged Epstein about girls as young as 15, the Washington Post reports. "This busyness I feel like fisherman some time I cache quick, some time no fish," Siad wrote in one email.
• In a recent CNN interview, Siad insisted he believed Epstein had rebuilt his life after his 2008 conviction and said none of the women he connected with Epstein had reported mistreatment to him, despite two saying Epstein abused them. "I trusted him and believed this guy was a professional person," he said. Siad said he believed Epstein's claim that he was a casting director for Victoria's Secret and the MC2 modeling agency.

• French prosecutors this year opened a criminal investigation into Epstein's modeling-industry connections, including information involving Siad. He had not yet been questioned by investigators, but he denied helping Epstein traffic and abuse women.
• He was also accused of raping a model in France in 1990, an allegation he denied. The Swedish model, Ebba Karlsson, said Said used a different name and she didn't learn his real identity until she saw his photo in the Epstein files, the Guardian reports. His death, she says, is "very frustrating" because he was very close to being arrested. "We worked so hard for this, trying to have justice," she says.