‘They were underage girls’: How Epstein brought victims from Brazil to Palm Beach
While on the hunt for young women and underage girls, Jeffrey Epstein repeatedly turned to Brazil. He lured girls as young as 13 with promises of lucrative modeling work and other enticements to entrap them into sexual servitude, according to a Miami Herald investigation based on the millions of pages of records released earlier this year by the U.S. Justice Department.
The disgraced financier worked with model scouts — including Epstein’s former business partner Jean-Luc Brunel — to recruit the girls, often from small towns and poor families. To woo them, he would shower them with gifts like luxury handbags and secure appointments with top hairdressers like celebrity stylist Frédéric Fekkai.
In the early 2000s, Epstein would jet down to the South American nation, attending modeling competitions and keeping up with the hottest Brazilian plastic surgeons to handle nips-and-tucks on his prospects. He owned an apartment in the upscale Vila Olímpia neighborhood of São Paulo and allegedly invited women to luxury hotels in the city, asking them to disrobe in front of him.
At the heart of Epstein’s recruiting operation were Brunel and his agency, Karin Models of America. The two men later used Brunel’s MC2 Model Management that had a prominent branch in Miami Beach.
But bringing in the women and girls was a tricky business, requiring an employer to sponsor visas. Brunel’s agencies applied for the visas on behalf of the women, claiming that they were going to work in the United States. Epstein would then foot the legal bills — several thousand dollars — for each applicant.
In one instance, Brunel brought over four girls from the same Brazilian agency to Epstein, according to a deposition given by one of Brunel’s former bookkeepers, Maritza Vazquez. Two of them were aged 13 to 15. She could not recall the agency’s name.
Vazquez had previously told the Herald that some of the women the agency managed never actually worked as models but were instead sent to parties Epstein hosted at his Palm Beach and Manhattan mansions.
In the mid-2010s, Epstein also explored the possibility of purchasing a Brazilian modeling agency himself, in partnership with musician and model scout Ramsey Elkholy.
“[M]aybe just buy Brazil for a couple hundred k [sic], that will insure a steady stream of punani,” Elkholy wrote in a December 2016 email to Epstein, using the Jamaican patois slang for “vagina.”
The Herald sent questions to Elkholy via his attorneys but did not receive a response.
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The Herald was able to identify several women who were recruited into Epstein’s network but is not revealing their identities because some were minors at the time and possibly his victims.
Earlier this year, Brazilian prosecutors launched an investigation into Epstein’s activities in the country, though details are currently under seal. The prosecutors confirmed that while they want to speak to the women, they are not the targets of the probe.
Catwalk to hell
Brunel would often drive the women he recruited to Epstein’s properties, his accountant Vazquez said in a deposition in 2010. The deposition was part of a civil suit one of Epstein’s victims had filed against him two years prior.
She alleged that Epstein and Brunel — who died in French custody in 2022 while under investigation for rape and trafficking women to Epstein — would travel to Brazil, where they would solicit sex workers.
“They were underage girls,” she said. “Like, 16, 17, 18.”
In 2004, Brunel founded and judged the inaugural Models New Generation competition, records reviewed by the Herald show. The contest, held that year in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil, had dozens of participants from across the world.
A 15-year-old from Brazil was the winner. Flight logs suggest that Epstein was in attendance on the final night of the two-week competition on Aug. 25.
The records also show that the winner was a passenger on Epstein’s private jets several times that year, flying between West Palm Beach, New York, Paris and Little St. James — the financier’s private island in the Caribbean where he allegedly sexually assaulted countless women and girls.
The Herald was able to identify one Brazilian woman who provides a case study of how Epstein enticed his victims by paying for their travel, giving them expensive gifts and securing appointments at Fekkai’s salons.
The woman, the records show, underwent some surgical procedure in São Paulo that Epstein paid for two days before he was released from the Palm Beach County Stockade on July 22, 2009, after serving 13 months on a charge of soliciting prostitution from a minor. The records do not state what kind of surgery it was.
Epstein checked in with her a month later, asking her to “come to Florida.” The records do not show whether the woman traveled to the U.S. to meet him.
But a little less than two years later, she introduced him to another young woman from northeastern Brazil who was looking to move to New York.
“She comes from a very tiny town here in the outskirts of Natal, and a very poor, simple family,” she wrote to Epstein in January 2011. “I’ve attached a pic she took for you from New Year’s Eve. You’re gonna love her!”
She was hoping Epstein could pay for the Natal woman’s travel.
“Could you take better photos,” Epstein replied two days later. “[L]ingerie, bikini?”
The records do not show whether Epstein received the new photos. But he decided not to help the woman from Natal.
Other records reveal the level of control Epstein had over the women and girls he recruited.
“[Y]ou only think of your own pleasure,” he wrote in a 2012 email rebuking one Brazilian woman for failing to make him a music playlist. “You think of yourself but not me.”
Another instance five years later shows him berating a model because she had not removed a piercing immediately after he suggested it.
“If I were you I would have had the piercing out ten days ago,” Epstein wrote to her. “That would have showed [sic] seriousness. You didn’t.”
The woman, then based in Barcelona, apologized profusely, saying she was busy with shoots. She removed her piercing and sent Epstein a photo within the hour.
Epstein, the records suggest, did not reply.
‘Fresh faces’
In 2016, Elkholy, a New York-based musician who also doubled as a modeling scout, sought Epstein’s partnership in purchasing some of Brazil’s top modeling agencies. Elkholy, the records show, had introduced several women from Brazil and elsewhere to Epstein over the years and often exchanged sexually explicit messages about them with him.
Elkholy was focusing his efforts on the Brazilian agencies Joy Models and Way Models and a modeling talent competition that aimed to propel young Brazilian women and girls into the industry’s spotlight.
“Would you be interested in that?” Elkholy asked Epstein on Sept. 11, 2016. “This way you would be getting younger girls … Fresh faces basically.”
Elkholy was also looking at two global fashion magazines.
He asked Epstein if he was interested in being a partial owner of Harper’s Bazaar or L’Officiel. Elkholy wanted to acquire the magazines’ Brazil editions.
“[M]uch cheaper shares and would get me the same results (p---y),” he explained to Epstein.
Epstein looked into the finances of the modeling agencies and magazines, the records show. He was not interested in the publications. It is unclear whether he ultimately invested in any of the agencies.
The Herald did not receive any response to requests for comment from Joy Models and Way Models.
Federal law enforcement officers arrested Epstein on July 6, 2019, on sex trafficking charges. He was found dead in his cell at a Lower Manhattan federal detention center roughly a month later, on Aug. 10.
This story was originally published May 21, 2026 at 5:30 AM.
