The Epstein fixer found dead in his Paris flat

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:08Today, yet another of Jeffrey Epstein's enablers dies without facing justice.

0:19Today in Focus is supported by Paramount+. This isn't the end of a fight, it's the start of one. Lioness, the critically acclaimed original series from Taylor Sheridan, returns August 2nd only on Paramount+. In the new season, hidden networks, foreign operatives and personal betrayals collide. Meanwhile, Jo walks the line between duty and family as unseen forces circle her world, leaving her to reckon with a war that now reaches into every part of her life. Don't miss the new season of Lioness, starring Zoe Saldana and Michael Kelly, with Morgan Freeman and Nicole Kidman. Streaming August 2nd, only on Paramount+.

1:18Throughout the 2000s, Jeffrey Epstein split his time living between his various luxury properties. A penthouse in New York, a private island in the Caribbean, a waterfront mansion in Palm Beach. Meanwhile, a small army of middlemen were fanned out across the world, scouting for young women to introduce to the billionaire. Daniel Syed was one of those middlemen, a model scout officially. Syed would regularly email Epstein from whichever country he was in. Sometimes it was Slovakia, sometimes it was the Czech Republic or Poland or Hungary, updating him on the work that he was doing. Amelia Gentleman is a senior reporter at The Guardian.

2:01And he gave very detailed summaries of who he'd met and why he thought Epstein might like them. He often wouldn't actually name any of the women, but he would give their nationalities, he'd give their ages, and he'd sometimes give their waist and bust measurements. Siad and Epstein had first met in the early 2000s and stayed in touch for well over a decade. When Epstein was jailed for soliciting sex from girls as young as 14, back in 2008, some of his associates cut him off, but not Siad. Sied often would try to emphasise that the women that he'd found for Epstein appeared very youthful or were indeed very youthful On one occasion he said he'd met a woman who was 26 but looked 18 and on another occasion he told him he'd had a very successful visit to an Eastern European country where he'd met several women who were 15 or 16 who he said would be ready the following year to go into the industry.

3:14Just months before Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges in 2019, Siad was messaging him about new women he'd scouted. Then, suddenly, Epstein died in his prison cell. And Siad, never a public figure, faded into obscurity. Until a few months ago, when the Department of Justice in the US began releasing a huge trove of documents detailing years of correspondence between Epstein and his associates. And Siyad's name appeared thousands of times. And he found himself entangled in the messy web of questions surrounding how Jeffrey Epstein's abuse and trafficking operation actually worked. You were aware of what?

3:55His conviction for child sex offenses. No, you're everything the same question. And as of this year, he was under investigation himself. Sied was accused both of human trafficking and also of rape. He was being investigated by France's central office for combating human trafficking.

4:21He denied it all. And then, last week... A French model recruiter linked to Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead at his home... Siad was found dead at a house on the outskirts of Paris from a heart attack, according to his lawyer. Siad was one of several French men accused of procuring women for Epstein and the second man who has died after being publicly linked to him. His death leaves behind a series of questions that will now go unanswered about Epstein's ring of enablers and about Siad's own alleged crimes. From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus, another one gone as justice slips away from Epstein's survivors.

5:07So in the late 80s, early 90s, I was in Stockholm, Sweden, where I grew up and where I lived. This is Eber Carlson. She first met Daniel Siad in the summer of 1990 when she was 20. But he introduced himself under a different name. Daniel Goldberg. so um we were outside in kongstergården which is like the big park in downtown stockholm and so i was there with my boyfriend and friends and suddenly i'm we're approached by this french guy who is a model scout and he approaches me saying do you work as a model you would be perfect for this model shoot we're doing in monaco and it was basically a one-way ticket so i was promised you know for a motto a lot of money at the time so as I arrived in Nice on the Riviera French Riviera I took a bus and went to Monaco and and he never showed up so I had a number and I called the number and said I'm here and he sounded really surprised like oh really like you're here and I'm like yeah well we had an appointment I'm going to do this work and everything and so he came down and picked me up at the phone booth and seemed like irritated.

6:28And I thought, that's so odd. From there, this Daniel Goldberg took her to meet the owner of a swimsuit company she was supposedly going to model for. But when they arrived, the swimsuit guy told them, you're too late, we've already done the shoot. So Daniel said, don't worry, I'm going to get you another job. And then he said, let's go to Cannes because I have friends there and they're going to help us out. So we took the train to this little village outside Cannes, and I struggled with my suitcase, carried up this hill, coming to this villa, and started knocking on the villa, and nobody's home.

7:04And he says, that's all right, let's go on the back of the house, we can get in. But it was shut down, it was covered up. And then he says, well, that's all right, because we can stay in the pool house. I looked around, there was a big pool, you know, overlooking the Mediterranean, and very beautiful. but the pool shack, the pool house was, when we opened the door, just a cement building. It had nothing inside. It was just very dirty. But the first thing I see is two small mattresses on the floor with dirty sheets. And I freak out and I think, am I going to sleep here with him? And that I got scared because nobody really knew where I was.

7:45and so at the time when we're about to go to bed and sleep he's basically all over me saying that you're so cold why are you so cold why can you just relax and why I didn't have the energy or the the willpower to resist I was too scared to and so yeah I was raped there. Afterwards, I blamed myself because I thought, well, why didn't I fight back or punch him or run away? But I was too scared to. The next day, she asked Daniel if she could call her parents and he accompanied her to a phone booth, standing outside while she made the call, listening in. She wanted to go home to Sweden, but she needed Daniel to arrange her flight and he was still promising her a modelling job.

8:35And then he said, well, you know what, I arranged a casting at Elite. I didn't know anything about the modelling agencies or the industry at all. So I was like, well, that sounds good. And he said, well, it's the most famous, prestigious modelling agency. And so we travelled to Paris. In Paris, Daniel had arranged for Ebba to meet the owner of Elite Models, one of the most powerful figures in the fashion industry, a man named Gerald Marie. And I was very impressed. You know, this is a huge office, beautiful. And for what was maybe like two hours or something, we sat down by the table and he started asking all these questions like, who do you want to be?

9:18What's your dream? And we're so beautiful and you could be so famous. And I have this movie coming out and since you speak French, you can do this movie. And after a while, he gets closer and closer, becoming very affectionate. And he takes out all these portfolios with the famous models. And he's asking me, like, do you recognize them? And I said, yeah, I do. And he said, what do you think they did to earn six figures? And as he says that, he pushes his hand inside my legs into my privates. And at that point, I just froze. and I didn't know what to do. So I just pull away, and later I'm like, I think I need to think about this.

10:05We end the meeting, and I go outside, and I sit on the bench, and I just cry because I don't know what to do. I guess I go back to where I was staying with Daniel, and I'm just broken. I don't know. I don't remember much about this time, to be honest.

10:29And later on, what I can remember is that I was walking the street in Champs -Élysées with Daniel. And suddenly I see another friend from Sweden and I'm very happy to see him. And I tell him a little bit what happened to me and telling him I don't know how to get home. I don't know what to do. And Daniel's overhearing this. And so Daniel comes up and starts screaming, like, don't tell lies. and then he pulls me away saying that i could fucking have you killed you don't know who i know i know the head of police in paris and then i'm terrified like i don't know how to if it's a joke or if it's true so i decided like i gotta get home and so i called gerard marie and asked him for a meeting and then i said i want to work with you i just need to go back home and get my driver's license and talk to my boyfriend and quit my job and so on.

11:26And so he gives me the ticket to go back home to Sweden. And on the plane, I cannot tell you how I was, that's when I could breathe, basically. And for years, I was scared that they were going to come after me. In 2020, French prosecutors launched an investigation into Gerald Marie, the elite model boss, after four women, including Ebba, made allegations of rape and sexual assault against him, all of which he has repeatedly denied. That investigation has since closed, after prosecutors concluded that the alleged crimes happened too long ago to be tried in a French court. But some of Marie's alleged victims, six women in total, are refusing to give up.

12:09Just this month, they launched a case against him, accusing him of rape and human trafficking. He's denied these allegations too. Ebba never saw Daniel again but in 2017 she was writing a memoir and wanted to see if she could find out more about him. She searched as best she could for a fashion industry scout by the name of Daniel Goldberg but nothing turned up. At the end of last year she found out why. I received a call from my lawyer at the time and she said I have a journalist who thinks he found your scout and I'm like oh my god really and so he sends me a picture and I look at it and I'm like oh my gosh it could be him but he was old so I wasn't sure so I asked him do you have a younger picture and he sends it to me and that's when I freak out because it's him and I have goosebumps and shivers down my spine and I can't believe we found the man after 36 years and so he says you won't believe this but he's in the Epstein files and there are like more than 2 ,000 emails with his name but it's Daniel Siad.

13:26As soon as a new batch of Epstein files were released at the start of this year Amelia Gentleman started combing through them. Well going through the Department of Justice Epstein files is a really, really fascinating process. I don't know if you've ever logged on or looked at it, Helen, but you are able to rifle through thousands and thousands of emails between Epstein and an enormous network of people who he was either friends with or was relying on to to help organise his life. And you get from that an incredibly clear picture of the kinds of people both that he wanted to be friends with, that he wanted to sort of show off to, but also, on the other side, the people that he relied on to organise his life for him.

14:21So we know that Daniel Siad was 69. We know that he was born in Algeria, but acquired later in life both French and Swedish citizenship. He was a model scout who travelled around the world meeting young women who he thought might have potential to work in the modelling industry. And he really went pretty much everywhere. He spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe, Sweden, parts of South America and Cuba. Right. And whenever we talk about Epstein, We usually describe him as a sort of multimillionaire financier. Was he actually involved in the modelling industry? Could there be a legitimate reason why SIAD was sending him girls?

15:08So Epstein had investments in a couple of modelling agencies. He was working with Victoria's Secret and also with an organisation called MC Squared, another modelling agency. But I think one of the strangest things about SIAD and Epstein's relationship was the sense that SIAD appeared to have that Epstein was and should be very closely involved in the recruitment of models for these agencies, which does seem quite peculiar. because Epstein obviously was somebody who wasn't managing the day-to-day castings for these model agencies. So on the face of it, it was a very peculiar setup that SIAD was sending Epstein regularly women who Epstein would cast his eye over and make promises to about furthering their modelling careers.

16:09It feels very, very odd. to say the least. Yeah so I started looking at these files in the beginning of February. I wasn't actually looking to understand anything about Daniel Sead at the time. I didn't know who he was. He wasn't an incredibly well-known figure outside of the modeling industry but I did notice the more of the emails I read that his name kept coming up. The other really kind of remarkable thing I suppose about their correspondence is that it, I mean, well, it explains a lot about how the recruitment of models process works, but it also gives a kind of very unfiltered insight into Epstein's insatiable appetite for meeting new young women.

17:00And yeah, you see really close up how Epstein put pressure on his enablers to find new people for him to meet, ostensibly for these modelling casting appointments. Sometimes he would give Epstein details of how he was getting on. Sometimes the work was very difficult and he told Epstein on one occasion that one of the fathers of a prospective model had got angry with him, had punched him and had broken his nose. He liked to update Epstein on how patient you had to be when you were scouting for models. And in one email in 2014, he told Epstein, in this business, I feel like fisherman. Sometimes I catch quick, sometimes no fish.

17:54And there's a really interesting power dynamic on display in the emails between Epstein and Siad. Siad sends long, detailed emails to Epstein explaining what he's done, what he's seen. And Epstein's replies are incredibly succinct and quite terse. He'll say, what about new girls? Any interesting women? And he would also often respond with just a one word answer to Siad's correspondence saying simply age?

18:42And so, Siad's name really entered the frame earlier this year, as you said, with the release of the Epstein files. Did he, Siad, ever talk out about what was contained with them? How did he defend himself. Yeah, so in June, he sat down for a CNN interview where he insisted that his work with Epstein was strictly professional. Because I never heard anything from anyone introduced him who came back to me that they had a bad situation with him. He consistently denied any wrongdoing and he described retrospectively having known Epstein as a nightmare. Do you have any regret about meeting Jeffrey Epstein?

19:32Yes. He said that he had truly believed Epstein to be a casting director. You believe Epstein was a casting director? That's how he had been introduced and how he introduced myself also. He said that it was unreasonable to expect him to have really looked into Epstein's background and connections. And he said, I'm nobody. I'm somebody from the mountain. When you meet somebody, a billionaire, well-known person, world wild and so on, he was such a powerful person and how can I not trust him? So I think in the last month or so, he really worked hard at trying to promote himself as an innocent in all of this.

20:20And certainly his lawyer also tried to minimise the significance of the many, many communications between the two men. And she told The Guardian in a statement that the worst thing about these files is that he and Epstein talk in language that we as women don't like. But she said he was working as a modelling scout and sending details to Epstein of the women. There's no evidence of any crime. Right. And that may well be true, but it doesn't take away the fact that Siad was providing Epstein with young women after Epstein's conviction for child sex offences. And Syed knew full well, didn't he, that Epstein had been jailed for that.

21:01So for me, he's free, man, he's clean. How can a government of the United States let this person out from jail? How? And at the time he died, Syed himself was being investigated for both rape and human trafficking. How far along was that investigation? So the French prosecutors have been contacted by 24 women who made allegations against Siad. By the time of his death, they had interviewed a number of them, but were still waiting to question, I think, a further eight. Siad himself hadn't yet been questioned. And this week, the French prosecutors have really responded, I suppose, with some defensiveness because they've been very heavily criticised by a number of his victims about how slowly they had responded in the wake of these allegations.

21:59And Daniel Sead was one of a number of model scouts and agencies who kept in very close contact with Jeffrey Epstein. Are there investigations into other people in that world and their connections to Epstein? Yes. And I think one of the reasons why there's so much frustration about the fact that Daniel Sead has died without being tried, without his case being heard in a court, is because we've seen this happening before. So another of the most prominent modelling scouts of the last 40 years was Jean-Luc Brunel, who was also being investigated for abuse of models and for his ties to Epstein. But he committed suicide in jail before his case was heard.

22:58Coming up, the questions left behind after Daniel Siad's death.

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24:20Amelia, Siad was found dead at his home on the outskirts of Paris last week and his lawyer initially suggested that he died from a heart attack. What did the post-mortem say? The autopsy last Friday found no evidence of foul play. We still don't have the precise cause of death and there are going to be some more toxicology and pathology tests to try and give a bit more information. but investigators said that there was no evidence that there'd been any foul play, no evidence of any recent violence that might have caused the death. We also learned that it was clear that Siad had not been in good health and that he had previously suffered a heart attack.

25:04But we've already seen that his death has aroused some suspicion, shall we say, as well as pretty wild speculation, given his connection to Epstein. The timing is weird, don't you think? Now, I don't know if there was any wrongdoing that occurred. I think it's good that the French... Autopsy will be performed on the body to determine the cause of death. Would love to know who was doing that. It'll be legitimate. It'll be very legitimate. Which leads us to the elephant in the room. Was Daniel Seid murdered to silence him? Do you think it's understandable that people are reluctant to believe that he died from natural causes?

25:35I think it's completely understandable that anyone involved in this case will be looking really, really closely at what's happened. And I can understand why people would be suspicious. We know that there are ongoing questions about Epstein's death. And I think the length of time that there's been before we've had any firm investigative results has helped to fuel that scepticism about pretty much everything that we know about these cases. And it certainly is the case that Siad's death is just a really stark reminder that justice delayed is justice denied and that the prosecuting authorities have to work faster to secure some kind of justice for the women who were abused by Epstein and his large network of facilitators and friends.

26:45So I was the first woman to come forward and file the complaint against him on 10th of February this year for rape and human trafficking. And then more survivors came forward. So at the end of the day, we were five that had filed a complaint against rape and I think 10 in total for human trafficking and rape. and so we heard already in April he was going to be arrested. Then it was pushed to May, then it was pushed to June, and they said before the summer he's going to be arrested. So we were waiting and waiting and being anxious. It's like a lot of stress to just sit and wait, not knowing what's going to happen.

27:24Yeah, and he knew full well what was coming, didn't he? There was no secret. Well, he said it himself. He wanted to be heard by the police. and so the shock to hear the other day I was actually flying from Sweden to the US so I just heard the message when I was in London Heathrow and I couldn't believe my ears you know like I was so shocked like I can't believe he's dead and I felt so sad because you know his death could have been prevented had they arrested him in time and is his does his death mean that you've reached the end really of your quest for justice no no not at all I think it's we still there's it's not about him you know it's not about only Epstein it's a network of people that have been collaborating for years I mean he was a model agent in for for scout for 40 years at least so um we need to know the truth about it first of all and hold the people accountable that know things.

28:29And so I think it's very sad. I think it's, I feel for him. I feel for his family. I wish he wasn't dead. And it's sad and unnecessary. And I'm angry at the prosecutors and I think they should be held accountable.

28:50That was Ebba Carlson and Guardian senior reporter Amelia Dentleman. My thanks to both of them. And that is all for today. This episode was produced by Alex Atak and Eli Block and presented by me, Helen Pidd. Sound design was by Brian McNamara and the executive producer was Sammy Kent. We'll be back in your feeds this afternoon with the latest.

29:14This is The Guardian.