How a Modelling Agency Became a Pipeline

"If I had disobeyed my mother and gone to New York, what might have happened to me?"

Gláucia Fekete was 16, living in rural Brazil, and taking her first steps in the modelling world when a charming Frenchman showed up at her family's door. Jean-Luc Brunel — a well-connected modelling agent with ties to the most powerful figures in fashion — had come to persuade her mother to let her travel to a competition in Ecuador. Her mother was suspicious. But Brunel was convincing.

Gláucia went. The competition passed without major incident. But near the end of the trip, Brunel made his real offer: fly to New York, all expenses paid, to participate in fashion shows. Her mother was contacted for permission. The answer was immediate. "No. Not a chance."

"They were only looking for children, minors," Barbara told the BBC. "Unfortunately, they found my daughter."

The Architecture of Exploitation

A BBC Brasil investigation published this week has uncovered evidence that Brunel didn't just occasionally introduce young women to Jeffrey Epstein — he built a system to do it. Using modelling agencies linked to him, Brunel actively recruited young women and girls from South America and arranged US visas to facilitate their travel to Epstein.

The mechanics were precise. One Brazilian woman, referred to as Ana to protect her identity, showed the BBC her US business visa. The sponsoring agency named on the document was Karin Models of America — one of Brunel's agencies. Ana says she never did a single day of modelling work for the agency. The visa existed for one reason: to get her to Epstein.

US government-released files place Epstein in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on August 24–25, 2004 — the exact dates of the modelling competition Gláucia attended. The same documents indicate that at least one model under the age of 16 who attended that event flew on Epstein's private plane at least twice that same year.

A former MC2 accountant — Brunel's later US agency, financially backed by Epstein — testified in a 2010 Florida court that Epstein paid for visas arranged through Brunel's agency. Court records and DOJ files corroborate that Brunel used these agencies to attract girls from multiple countries, including minors.

"He Chose Me"

Ana's account fills in the human texture of what the documents only sketch in outline. She left her hometown in southern Brazil after being promised modelling work in São Paulo. On arrival, the woman who recruited her took her documents and told her she now owed money for travel and photos. There was no modelling work.

Sponsored

Advertise with Us

[email protected]

Sponsored

"She was a madam. Before I knew it, she was pimping me out."

A few weeks after her 18th birthday, Ana was taken to the home of a prominent São Paulo businessman. Someone described Epstein as "the king of the world" and noted: "He likes younger girls." Days later, Ana and two other women were sent to a luxury hotel. Epstein would pick one. "He chose me."

Over the following four months, Ana travelled to the US and France with Epstein. She visited his private island in the US Virgin Islands. She thought she was his girlfriend — until she found him in bed with someone else. "Until then, it hadn't sunk in that he did this with many girls."

Her account includes a detail that is both mundane and chilling. Epstein would give her $300 to go out for a walk, then tell her to keep the change. He would leave money in her room, wait to see if she returned it, and then tell her she could keep it. "He would test me," she says.

For the initial hotel meeting and the Paris trip, Epstein had agreed to pay the Brazilian madam $10,000 (£7,400). According to Ana — and consistent with the 2010 court testimony — Epstein paid only part of that sum, leading to heated phone calls over the unpaid balance.

What the Investigation Leaves Unresolved

Brunel died by suicide in a Paris prison in 2022, awaiting trial on charges of rape, sexual assault, and recruiting minors for Epstein. Epstein himself died in a Manhattan detention centre in 2019. With both central figures gone, the full scope of the network remains legally unresolved.

Brunel denied all wrongdoing before his death. His lawyers said he had been "crushed" by allegations and blamed a "media-judicial system." There has been no suggestion that any agency other than those managed and controlled by Brunel in the US was involved in wrongdoing.

Brazil's Federal Public Prosecutor's Office has now opened an investigation into the recruitment network. But the structural questions go beyond any single prosecution: who else knew? Who processed the paperwork? Who looked the other way?

Laura, a Western European contestant at the 2004 Ecuador competition who asked not to be named, put it plainly. Brunel "knew exactly which girls were vulnerable," she told the BBC. "The girls from Brazil and East European countries seemed to be the prime target."

The Bigger Pattern

What makes this investigation significant — beyond the details of one network — is what it illustrates about how exploitation operates at scale. It doesn't require back-alley coercion. It uses the infrastructure of legitimacy: registered agencies, official visas, international competitions, and the aspirational language of opportunity.

For young women from economically precarious backgrounds, the promise of a modelling career in New York or Paris isn't just glamorous — it's a potential escape route from poverty. That vulnerability, as Laura observed, was not incidental to the targeting. It was the point.

Ana herself didn't initially frame what happened to her as exploitation. Epstein was "affectionate." She thought she was his girlfriend. This is consistent with what researchers and advocates describe as the grooming dynamic in trafficking cases: the deliberate blurring of coercion and care, especially when economic dependency is involved.

Gláucia's story ended differently — saved, as she puts it, by her mother's refusal. "My mother saved me." But she is acutely aware of what that means about everyone else. "Without knowing it, I was in the middle of that storm."