Epstein's model scout Daniel Siad found dead at his home near Paris amid rape case trial

A modelling scout who recruited women for the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead at his home in Paris. French officials on Wednesday confirmed the death of 69-year-old Daniel Siad, who was under investigation by the prosecutors specialising in human trafficking.

He was accused of rape and other charges. Siad garnered attention after his name appeared in more than 1,000 documents in the US Department of Justice Epstein files that were declassified earlier this year. It is pertinent to note that Siad was one of the several French men accused of aiding Epstein in trafficking and abusing women.

While he had not yet been questioned by the investigators in the case, he has denied the allegations, saying he wanted to give his version of events. French officials said that Siad was found dead in his home on Monday evening. An investigation to determine the cause of death has been opened, and an autopsy is to be carried out.

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Over the years, Siad has been travelling around the world, while visiting villages in Eastern Europe or flying to Cuba or Sweden, trying to source women to work in the modelling industry. Alongside this, he also looked for women he had hoped Epstein might like and would want to meet, the Epstein Files revealed earlier this year.

Siad's association with Epstein

According to the Epstein Files, Siad compared his work to fishing, explaining to the late British financier in an email in 2014 that patience was required: “In this busyness I feel like a fisherman some time I catch (sic) quick, some time no fish.”

The files also mentioned that the model scout was one of Epstein's "most loyal correspondents". He remained in frequent contact with him until months before the financier’s death, receiving wired payments apparently for expenses incurred during travel to find women.

In an email statement to The Guardian in February this year, Siad said that he believed he had been providing women to Epstein for legitimate model casting sessions in Paris. “He had a big apartment where he used to organise all his meetings, including casting for models I recruited, for Victoria’s Secret and MC2,” he wrote in an emailed statement. “The casting time would not last more than 10 minutes. I always left the place with the models immediately.”

Earlier this year, former Swedish model Ebba Karlsson accused Siad of rape. She said that he had scouted her in her home town of Stockholm, Sweden, in 1990, when she was a 20-year-old model, and later raped her in France. She revealed that she was only able to identify him after seeing images of him in reporting of Epstein files because Siad initially went by a different name.

Karlsson, who did not have any interactions with Epstein, filed criminal allegations of rape and human trafficking against Siad in Paris earlier this year. Siad’s lawyer in Paris, Ménya Arab-Tigrine, told the Guardian earlier this year that he denied the allegation. Responding to the news of Siad’s death, Karlsson told AFP it was “very frustrating”. “He was very close to being arrested. We worked so hard for this, trying to have justice.”