A modelling scout whose name surfaced thousands of times in the Jeffrey Epstein files has been found dead at his home outside Paris, prompting outrage from alleged victims who say his death has robbed them of their day in court.

Daniel Siad, 69, was discovered on Monday in Colombes, a north-western suburb of the French capital, the Nanterre prosecutor’s office confirmed. An investigation into the cause of death was opened that evening, with a post-mortem examination planned. Siad had been under investigation in France since February on charges of organised human trafficking and conspiracy to commit a crime, but had never been arrested.

The Paris prosecutor’s office defended its handling of the case, stating that surveillance techniques had not yielded sufficient evidence to justify detaining Siad. “The investigation opened on 18 February 2026 covering charges of organised human trafficking and conspiracy to commit a crime is continuing in order to identify all individuals potentially involved despite the termination of criminal proceedings against Daniel Siad,” the office said. “Daniel Siad was subject to special investigative techniques, notably telephone surveillance, but they did not provide enough evidence justifying his immediate arrest.”

Siad’s lawyer, Ménya Arab-Tigrine, maintained his client’s innocence. “He is dead and he was innocent,” she said in a statement, stressing that Siad had “never been prosecuted”.

But for those who had come forward with allegations against him, the news was devastating. Lawyers for the former model who filed the first complaint said they were “stunned” by his death. “We are at a loss for words to describe the anger and sadness we feel,” they said, with alleged victims “denied a criminal trial”. The lawyers voiced “immense anger” toward the prosecutor’s office, accusing it of “scandalous” inaction that demonstrated “the public authorities’ contempt for victims of sexual crimes, even when these crimes are linked to the human trafficking network established by Epstein and his accomplices”.

One former model who gave a deposition to police in June as part of the investigation told the BBC that Siad’s death meant any information he might have held about Epstein was now lost. “An important link in the chain has just vanished into thin air, without there even having been a chance to recover the information Daniel Siad might have possessed, given that he was never questioned,” she said. “Too much time has been lost… and it is yet another way for the leads to go cold. I hope we won’t have to wait another seven years to see his home searched, even though I think it is already too late.”

Anne-Claire Le Jeune, who represents six women who made complaints about Siad, said victims had been deprived of justice: “My clients found the strength to break a particularly heavy silence, given Daniel Siad’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. They faced every stage of the proceedings with remarkable courage. It is deeply regrettable that the slow pace of the investigation resulted in his death before he could be questioned or taken into police custody, thereby depriving the victims of a crucial step in their pursuit of truth and justice.”

Epstein victim Anya – not her real name – previously told the BBC that Siad had introduced her to Epstein. “It was a complete set-up,” she said, describing Siad as “essentially a professional trafficker”.

In a recent CNN interview, Siad had insisted he was unaware of any abuse. “I trusted him, I believed this guy is a professional person,” he said, referring to Epstein. He denied wrongdoing in multiple media interviews, telling BFMTV in May: “I have never raped anyone in my life.” In one email to Epstein released in the files, Siad wrote in badly spelled English: “In This busyness I feel like fisherman some time I cache quick, some time no fish.”

Siad’s death echoes that of another Epstein associate, French modelling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who was found hanged in his Paris prison cell in 2022 while awaiting trial on suspicion of rape and trafficking of minors. Epstein himself died by suicide in a New York jail cell in 2019 as he awaited federal trial for sex trafficking.