One-time top modeling agency boss Jean-Luc Brunel was prepared to turn on his longtime friend Jeffrey Epstein but suddenly stopped cooperating after the pedophile financier was informed about his negotiations with officials.
Brunel, who used his position as the head of a US modeling agency to recruit foreign girls and young women for Epstein, had been secretly negotiating with lawyers representing some of the financier’s victims in 2016, newly-released files show.
His attorney even told the victims’ lawyer that his client had incriminating photos of Epstein as they discussed a date for Brunel to speak with federal prosecutors in New York in exchange for immunity, according to the documents.
‘One of Epstein’s bfs, Jean Luc Brunel, has helped get girls. He is wanting to cooperate,’ a handwritten note made by federal prosecutors in February 2016 reads.
‘Brunel is afraid of being prosecuted,’ the prosecutor noted.
It also said he had ‘photographic evidence’ and ‘doesn’t want to implicate himself’.
But Brunel mysteriously never followed through with the agreement to testify against Epstein, and went into hiding following the pedophile’s arrest in 2019.
He then suffered an eerily similar fate to the late financier when he was found hanged in his prison cell in February 2022.
Jean-Luc Brunel, who once ran a top US modeling agency, was ready to testify against Jeffrey Epstein in 2016, newly-released documents show
Brunel used his position as the head of a modeling agency to recruit foreign girls and young women for Epstein. The two are pictured here with unidentified women
Federal prosecutors wrote in handwritten notes that Brunel is ‘wanting to cooperate’ and ‘has photographic evidence’
It remains unclear what prompted Brunel to change his mind about testifying against the pedophile, but the decision apparently came after Epstein found out that federal prosecutors were seeking to negotiate with his friend.
On May 3, 2016, Epstein emailed Kathy Ruemmler, an attorney he corresponded with regularly, telling her Brunel was planning to visit the US Attorney’s Office the following week and that one of Brunel’s friends ‘had asked for 3 million dollars so that Jean Luc would not go in’, the Justice Department files show.
Epstein also told the attorney, who resigned from her top position at Goldman Sachs last week, that Brunel was afraid he would be arrested if he failed to attend the meeting.
‘I want to know more,’ Epstein wrote in the typo-laden email, in which he also dismissed Brunel’s lawyer and his friends as ‘scammers’ and cast doubt on their credibility.
Ruemmler later responded, asking Epstein to call her and explain.
The following day she wrote back, ‘Awake now. Talking to Poe in 20 mins,’ referring to Gregory Poe, Epstein’s lawyer in Washington DC.
When asked about the emails, Jennifer Connely, a spokeswoman for Ruemmler, told the Journal it ‘was another instance of Epstein attempting to engage Ms Ruemmler on a matter about which she had no knowledge, and she appropriately directed him to his legal counsel’.
Poe also told the Journal he didn’t talk with Ruemmler and Epstein about Brunel ‘on May 4, 2016 or at any other time’.
He said he had a scheduled call that day with Ruemmler to discuss his work on a legal motion to quash a subpoena directed at Epstein.
‘My engagement with Jeffrey Epstein was limited,’ Poe said, adding that he stopped working for Epstein in 2016.
It is unclear why Brunel changed his mind about testifying, but it apparently came after Epstein found out about the planned negotiations
Epstein reached out to attorney Kathy Ruemmler asking for more information about Brunel’s scheduled meeting with federal prosecutors
Meanwhile, Brunel continued to work with Epstein, against his attorney’s objections.
‘I recommended and advised him to stop communicating with Epstein, but he never did,’ Joseph Titone, Brunel’s lawyer, told the Wall Street Journal.
The modeling agency boss’s decision not to cooperate ultimately ‘set us back a couple years’, David Boies, one of the attorneys who filed civil lawsuits on behalf of Epstein’s victims, told the Journal.
‘We know from our lawsuits that there were more than 50 girls that were trafficked after this,’ he added.
Documents show the prosecutor who wrote the February 2016 note later told Justice Department officials she discussed how she met with lawyers for Epstein’s victims, along with colleagues at the US Attorney’s Office and the FBI, but no investigation was opened.
But the Department of Justice ultimately didn’t make any moves against Epstein until after a Miami Herald investigation in late 2018 brought new attention to the case.
When he was finally arrested in 2019, Brunel and Ghislaine Maxwell were named as Epstein’s co-conspirators.
The Department of Justice did not make any moves against Epstein until 2019
Brunel and Ghislaine Maxwell were named as co-conspirators following Epstein’s arrest
The newly-released documents also reveal the extent of Brunel’s relationship with Epstein, showing that he traveled on the financier’s private jet, visited his private island and exchanged hundreds of emails over the years.
Brunel had made a name for himself in the modeling industry, despite coming under fire in 1988 after ’60 Minutes’ aired an investigation into modeling agencies featuring women who said they were drugged by the modeling scout and were expected to have sex with his male friends to get work.
No criminal charges were filed against him at the time, and by the early 2000s, he had forged a friendship with Epstein.
In 2005, Epstein even wired up to $1 million to Brunel to help him launch MC2 Model Management, which opened offices in New York and Miami later that year.
The agency’s name appeared to be an inside joke and an homage to the equation E=MC², with E standing for Epstein as he used the agency to procure women, according to the Journal.
The arrangement was detailed in one email from July 13, 2006, in which Epstein wrote to Brunel at his MC2 address, instructing him to put a woman ‘on your payroll’ with a $50,000 annual salary.
He added that he would be in Paris the following week and ‘could see her then.’
The newly-released documents also reveal the extent of Brunel’s relationship with Epstein, showing that he traveled on the financier’s private jet, visited his private island and exchanged hundreds of emails over the years. The two are pictured with Maxwell on Epstein’s private jet
When Epstein was then jailed in Florida in 2008 after pleading guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution, jail records show Brunel visited Epstein almost 70 times.
In the aftermath, it appeared Epstein decided to start procuring women in their late teens and 20s from Europe and Russia, whom he could lure to the US and abuse, as they were dependent on him for visas, housing and finances.
‘Epstein’s wealth and power allowed him to infiltrate industries, perhaps most pervasively the modeling industry,’ said Brad Edwards, a lawyer who has represented more than 200 Epstein victims.
‘He found in Jean-Luc a like-minded predator with whom he could conspire on a daily basis to recruit and control the lives of countless young women.’
The two eventually became so close that a 2012 version of Epstein’s trust listed Brunel as a beneficiary for as much as $5 million.
At around the same time, MC2’s former financial controller and bookkeeper Maritza Vasquez was set to give a deposition about Epstein.
She had given a sworn statement two years earlier in a civil suit filed by one of Epstein’s victims in which she described how models were placed in apartments under his control and how visas were arranged for underage girls.
Ahead of her deposition, Brunel emailed Epstein asking for advice.
‘Her lawyers said she will take the 5th on everything. What to do???’ he asked, according to the documents.
‘Ask every question you can think of, did she have sex with the girls. Make her sit and take the fifth to every question for hours,’ Epstein replied.
Brunel was found hanged in his prison cell in February 2022
The documents also show that Brunel and Epstein relied on a common recruiter, Daniel Siad, to find girls and women in other countries.
Siad, a European modeling scout, exchanged dozens of emails with Brunel and Epstein.
In one exchange in July 2014, Siad told Epstein he ‘had 2 girls from Sweden, a Slovakian, 2 French and [redacted], the Russian, the [one] with whom you spoke.’
Epstein then said he would reimburse Siad for his expenses and asked for the girls’ names.
Siad later compared his recruiting efforts to fishing, saying: ‘In This busyness [sic] I feel like fisherman some time I cache [sic] quick, some time no fish.’
He then ended the email with a tally of his expenses: 2,700 euros.
In a video posted to X and broadcast on French television, Siad said he only worked professionally with Epstein, to introduce him to models.
He said Epstein ‘took advantage of my trust.’
‘He’s a gentleman, he knows how to talk, he’s a diplomat,’ Siad claimed. ‘I wasn’t in a position to know that this man was dangerous.’
‘With time, we have learnt that he committed atrocities.’
Virginia Giuffre, an outspoken Epstein victim, alleged in December 2014 that Brunel would bring girls as young as 12 to the United States and pass them onto friends. She is pictured here with Prince Andrew
By December 2014, Virginia Giuffre filed a motion to join a lawsuit challenging Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement related to his arrest in Florida.
She alleged Brunel would bring girls as young as 12 to the United States and pass them on to friends, including Epstein.
The allegations apparently caused Brunel and Epstein’s friendship to fray, and in January 2015, Brunel and MC2 sued Epstein in Florida court claiming the agency had gone from being worth millions to ‘almost worthless’ because of the notoriety surrounding Epstein’s crimes.
The lawsuit alleged Brunel lost potentially $10 million in profits, that photographers and scouts cut ties with MC2 and that Brunel could no longer recruit new models because families refused to entrust their daughters to a man publicly linked with Epstein.
One month after the suit was filed, Titone, Brunel’s lawyer, called Edwards, the victims’ attorney, saying he was having trouble serving Epstein with the suit and raised the possibility Brunel possessed photographic evidence against Epstein.
But the feud between Brunel and Epstein seemed to come to a temporary end by April 2015 when Brunel suggested a friend mediate their dispute, and later that week Epstein asked to meet Brunel.
‘I have some ideas that I think you will like,’ he told the model agency boss on April 14.
Brunel ultimately wound up settling the suit, the terms of which were confidential, as Epstein continued luring young women.
When Epstein was later found dead in his own jail cell in 2019, Brunel went into hiding as French authorities launched an investigation, searching his home and offices.
He was finally arrested in December 2020 as he attempted to board a plane to Senegal.
Despite his untimely death, prosecutors in Paris said Saturday they would re-examine the case against Brunel and set up a special team to analyze evidence that could implicate French nationals.
Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau also announced on Wednesday two other investigations related to Epstein’s dealings, according to Le Monde.
One would be focused on human trafficking, while the other is focused on ‘financial offenses of money laundering, breaches of probity or tax fraud.’
The probes will be conducted in collaboration with the National Directorate of Judicial Police, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office and several other federal offices.
The Daily Mail reached out to Poe and a spokesperson for Ruemmler. Siad could not be reached for comment.
