MC2 Model Management

MC2 Model Management was a modeling agency with offices in New York City and Miami, founded around 2004 to 2005 by the French agent Jean-Luc Brunel out of the restructured American division of his Paris agency, Karin Models, and financed by Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein's bank, JPMorgan Chase, extended a letter of credit to the agency in connection with Epstein and recorded internally in 2011 that "MC2 Model Management and Jeffrey Epstein engaged in racketeering that involved luring in minor children for sexual play for money." The bank kept Epstein as a client until 2013. Brunel died in a Paris prison in February 2022 while under investigation for the rape of minors.¹²³

Founding and Financing

Brunel built MC2 from the U.S. arm of Karin Models, which he had run in Paris since the late 1970s and which had been the subject of a 1988 60 Minutes report in which American models said Brunel and another Paris agent drugged and raped them. Financial records cited in litigation show Epstein wiring about one million dollars to Brunel in connection with the launch and providing the agency a line of credit; some accounts put his backing closer to two million dollars. MC2's former bookkeeper, Maritza Vasquez, testified in a 2010 deposition that Epstein had invested roughly one million dollars in the agency.¹

JPMorgan's Files

According to shareholder complaints quoting JPMorgan's internal records, a March 2011 report by the bank stated that MC2 and Epstein "engaged in racketeering that involved luring in minor children for sexual play for money," that the agency's owner was a "frequent passenger on Epstein's private jet and often visited Epstein in jail," and that Epstein had paid MC2 one million dollars in 2005, "unknown if the money was given as a secret investment or payment for services as a procurer."²

A 2011 compliance summary relayed that a press report on the Justice Department investigation said Epstein had "brought under age girls to the US via a modeling agency M2 that is owned by a guy named Brunel," and continued: "Turns out the banker said today we extended Epstein a loan in relation to this modeling agency." The loan was a JPMorgan letter of credit to MC2. The writer judged the agency "legit" and added that "it would be hard for us to tell" whether "girls were exploited via their contract or arrangement." The same summary recorded that anti-money-laundering staff had asked at a private-bank risk meeting that the bank "exit this relationship."²

On July 20, 2011, JPMorgan's general counsel, Stephen Cutler, wrote to Jes Staley and Mary Erdoes, among others: "This is not an honorable person in any way. He should not be a client." The next day he wrote to Erdoes that Epstein was "[n]ot a person we should do business with, period." Epstein's accounts remained open, and the bank continued to do business with him personally until 2013. Payments drawn from his JPMorgan accounts included nearly 1.5 million dollars to known recruiters, among them MC2.²

Recruitment

U.S. prosecutors and investigators reported that they believed MC2 functioned as a cover to recruit and supply women and girls for Epstein.³ Flight logs place Brunel on Epstein's aircraft, including a February 2005 flight with Nadia Marcinkova, one of the four women later immunized as potential co-conspirators in Epstein's 2007 non-prosecution agreement.¹ Virginia Giuffre alleged in court filings that Brunel "offered modeling opportunities to lure young girls, some as young as 12, to the U.S." and that Epstein directed her to have sex with him; Sarah Ransome produced photographs of young women on Epstein's island, some of which she said Brunel had taken and given to her. Brunel denied all allegations.¹⁴⁵

Brunel was detained at Charles de Gaulle Airport on December 16, 2020 as he prepared to fly to Dakar, placed under formal investigation for the rape of minors over fifteen and sexual harassment, and found hanged in his cell at La Santé Prison on February 19, 2022.⁴⁶