Modeling Scout Accused Of Recruiting Young Women For Jeffrey Epstein Found Dead

Model recruiter Daniel Siad, who introduced young women to Jeffrey Epstein, found dead at his home in France. https://t.co/LPd7XjF0PD

— CNN (@CNN) July 22, 2026

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He had long denied wrongdoing, saying he had no idea the convicted pedophile “was dangerous.” He was either 68 or 69 years old at the time of his death.

Siad and Epstein communicated for around 10 years – with their last correspondence soon before the financier’s 2019 suicide in a Manhattan lockup.

Siad bragged about the women he had found in emails included in the Epstein files.

“Hello Jeffrey, I just found an amizinng [sic] one. She is 20 years old but she looks younger, from Latvia,” he wrote in one sent in June 2009, one year after Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to soliciting prostitution.

In one July 2014 email, Siad appeared to compare recruiting women to fishing.

“In this busyness [sic] I feel like fisherman, some time I cache quick, some time no fish,” he reportedly wrote to Epstein.

In that particular exchange, Siad expressed frustration that Epstein had canceled a meeting.

“I will reimburse you of course for any expenses,” Epstein replied back. “I value your friendship and hope this did not cause you too much trouble.”

Siad always denied wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.

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A French modeling scout with close ties to Jeffrey Epstein has been found DEAD at his home outside Paris.

69-year-old Daniel Siad was accused of aiding Epstein in trafficking and abusing women.

Siad hadn’t been questioned yet, but denied everything.

His name appeared… pic.twitter.com/mvDQXZ8OvT

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) July 22, 2026

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He was named in February by Laure Beccuau, the chief Paris prosecutor, as “one of the people who could be questioned” as part of a pair of broader inquiries into people connected to Mr. Epstein that opened that month.

In a statement on Wednesday, Ms. Beccuau said investigators had identified or been contacted by 24 women who were victims or witnesses of incidents “likely committed by Daniel Siad or others implicated,” and had spoken with 16 of them. The investigation had not “yet yielded any evidence justifying his immediate arrest,” Ms. Beccuau added.

In a broadcast interview in May, Mr. Siad denied the accusations against him and said he was waiting for justice to take its course.

In that interview, Mr. Siad said he had worked as a model scout for 30 years and was introduced to Mr. Epstein in the early 2000s.

Over 15 years, Mr. Siad connected Mr. Epstein to about a dozen models, Mr. Siad said. None of them ever gave him “negative feedback” about Mr. Epstein, he said. “My relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was strictly professional,” he added.

Mr. Siad’s lawyer, Ménya Arab-Tigrine, said on Wednesday that her client had “consistently proclaimed his innocence.”

Separately, prosecutors said this year that they had also received a complaint from a Swedish woman accusing Mr. Siad of committing “sexual acts that she describes as rape” in 1990 in France.

The woman, a former model named Ebba P. Karlsson, wrote on a website that she co-founded to publicize testimonies from abuse survivors that Mr. Siad “raped me in a pool house behind a villa on the French Riviera.” In the May interview Mr. Siad said, “I never raped a woman in my life.”

Despite Mr. Siad’s death, the investigation will continue “to identify all individuals who may be implicated,” Ms. Beccuau said in the statement on Wednesday.

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