Ghislaine Maxwell is serving twenty years in federal prison for conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse minors. Jean-Luc Brunel, the French modelling agent accused of supplying Epstein with young women, died in his cell in Paris in 2022 while awaiting trial on charges of raping minors. Epstein was found dead in a Manhattan jail in 2019. A fourth name emerged from the documents released by the United States Department of Justice. The 68-year-old man, whose name is featured 1,841 times in the DOJ files on Epstein, died before French investigators could question him. Daniel Amar Siad was found dead at his home in Colombes, northwest of Paris, on 20 July 2026.
On 18 February 2026, the Paris prosecutor’s office opened a framework investigation into organised human trafficking and criminal conspiracy in preparation for a crime. It entrusted the inquiry to France’s Central Office for the Repression of Human Trafficking, known as OCRTEH. Five rape and trafficking complaints had been filed against him since 2022, but Siad had always denied the accusations and said he was ready to face his accusers.
Investigators were expected to interview him. A lawyer for several of the women said he was due to be questioned shortly; Le Parisien reported that some had been assured he would be taken into police custody before the summer. Neither happened.
His death ensured that investigators would never hear his account of the Epstein network with which the documents linked him for years. Ebba Karlsson, the Swedish former model who accused Siad of raping her after luring her to the Côte d’Azur with promises of modelling work, later said she believed he had been “eliminated” because “he had too many connections with powerful people.” The cause of his death had still not been established publicly when this article was completed.
