In 2002, a seventeen-year-old girl from Londrina, Brazil boarded Jeffrey Epstein's private jet in Paris. Her agent was Jean-Luc Brunel, the French modeling scout who, over three decades, built an international procurement network that delivered young girls and women to Epstein and others. He had been running this operation since at least the 1980s. On the flight from Paris to New York, there were approximately thirty girls. Some sat on Epstein's lap. Ghislaine Maxwell moved through the cabin with the ease of someone who had seen all of this before, probably because she had.

"I was a little scared when I saw all those girls," Amanda Ungaro told the Brazilian newspaper O Globo in April 2026. "I was like, 'Guys, where am I?' It didn't seem like a chance meeting. Those people had not just met, as was my case." "Some of them sat on his lap, stayed close, playing," Ungaro said of Epstein. "It gave the impression that she already knew those girls," she said of Maxwell.

Ungaro has not accused Epstein of directly assaulting her. She arrived in New York, found herself in a world she didn't understand, and got out of it. Twenty-four years later, she is in Brazil, having been deported from the United States in 2025 by an immigration agency that was contacted by her ex-partner, the man who introduced Donald Trump to his wife. When they met in New York later that year, he was thirty-two years old. She was only seventeen years old.

Who Jean-Luc Brunel Was

Jean-Luc Brunel had been scouting models since the 1970s, initially through Karin Models in Paris. Allegations of rape and coercion followed him for years, publicly enough that CBS's 60 Minutes ran a segment on him in 1988 naming him in accusations of drugging and assaulting models. The fashion industry, characteristically, ignored the victims and continued to work with him. Among the girls he "discovered" during this period was Christy Turlington, whom he signed at fourteen years old.

In a 2015 affidavit, Giuffre claimed Epstein had told her he had "slept with over 1,000 of Brunel's girls."

His relationship with Epstein strengthened through the 1990s. Between 1998 and 2005, Brunel appears in Epstein's flight logs on twenty-five separate trips. After Epstein's 2008 conviction and plea to "soliciting sex with a minor", Brunel visited him in jail at least seventy times across the thirteen months Epstein served. In 2005, Epstein had wired Brunel at least a million dollars to fund MC2 Model Management, a new agency with offices in New York and Miami. The name is widely understood as an Epstein inside reference: E=mc2. Employees of MC2 later testified they were paid to help obtain visas for young girls living in condos Epstein maintained at 301 East 66th Street in New York. Brunel's former bookkeeper for both Karin Models and MC2, Maritza Vasquez, said in a 2010 sworn statement that Brunel routinely housed models in those condos.

Virginia Giuffre, in sworn civil depositions, described Brunel as the core recruiter: he identified girls, approached them with modeling promises, moved them internationally, and delivered them to Epstein. In a 2015 affidavit, Giuffre claimed Epstein had told her he had "slept with over 1,000 of Brunel's girls." A 2007 court complaint alleged that Epstein, Maxwell, Brunel, and others had "deliberately engaged in a pattern of racketeering that involved luring minor children through MC2, mostly girls under the age of 17, to engage in sexual play for money."

In Brazil, the trafficking pipeline worked through modeling competitions. In 2004, Brunel visited Gláucia Fekete's family home in rural Brazil when she was sixteen, offering her entry into the Models New Generation contest in Ecuador. At the competition, contestants reported they were not allowed to contact their families. When Brunel subsequently offered to fly Fekete to New York with all expenses paid, her mother refused, cut off contact, and later said she believed that refusal had protected her daughter. BBC News and Brazilian federal prosecutors, who opened a formal inquiry in February 2026, documented this pattern in detail: Brunel used contests, agencies, and visa paperwork to move young women from Brazil toward Epstein. At least one Brazilian woman, identified only as Ana, showed the BBC her passport and a U.S. visa that listed Karin Models of America as the sponsor. She said she never worked for the agency.

In 2016, after Epstein's death became likely and before anyone expected it, Brunel quietly opened negotiations with federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. Handwritten notes from a federal prosecutor, released in the 2026 tranche of Epstein documents, state plainly: "One of Epstein's bfs, Jean Luc Brunel, has helped get girls. He is wanting to cooperate." Brunel's lawyer confirmed his client had recruited girls for Epstein and possessed photographs. A date was scheduled for Brunel to walk into the U.S. Attorney's office. Then Epstein himself became aware of the threat: released documents show him writing to attorney Kathy Ruemmler that an associate of Brunel's had demanded three million dollars "so that Jean-Luc would not go in." Whether any payment changed hands is unknown. What is clear is that Brunel ceased all communications and disappeared from the process entirely.

Three years later, Epstein was dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Two years after that, on February 19, 2022, Brunel was found hanging in his cell at La Santé prison in Paris. He had been charged in France with rape and sexual assault of minors and with trafficking of minors. He died before any of those charges reached trial. French authorities ruled it a suicide. In early 2026, French magistrates announced they would reopen the entire case. Ungaro arrived in New York on Brunel's plane in 2002. She was one of the girls he was moving through his network when that network was at its operational peak.

Paolo Zampolli

Zampolli was born in Milan in March 1970 to a wealthy family. His father, who owned Harbert, an Italian toy company that licensed American products including Star Wars figures and Easy-Bake Ovens, died in a skiing accident when Zampolli was eighteen. He left university to take over the company, then sold it to a group controlled by Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi, by that point, was already a documented member of Propaganda Due, the covert Masonic lodge known as P2 that Italian magistrates and parliamentary investigations identified as the connective tissue between Italian organized crime, neofascist networks, and elements of Western intelligence services during the Cold War. P2 was implicated in bank collapses, political assassinations, and the financing of the Argentinian junta. Zampolli's family business was sold into that structure. He was eighteen.

He moved to New York on the advice of John Casablancas, founder of Elite Model Management, who had watched Zampolli organize the Look of the Year contest in Ibiza in 1994 and told him to come to the United States. Casablancas himself had faced his own extended allegations of sexual relationships with underage models throughout his career. Zampolli founded ID Model Management and began building the social world that would, within a few years, connect him to essentially everyone in this story.

By his own account, he introduced Melania Knauss to Donald Trump at a party at the Kit Kat Club in September 1998. He had sponsored Melania's H-1B visa to enter the United States in 1996, placed her in his apartment building at Zeckendorf Towers in Manhattan, and served as the primary social connection between her and the man she would marry. Trump called him "My Paolo." Zampolli attended the Trump wedding in 2005. The relationship was close and durable enough that in 2020, Trump named him to the Kennedy Center board of trustees. In March 2025, Trump appointed him Special Envoy for Global Partnerships, a position that has since taken him to Davos and Budapest. As Special Envoy he has also publicly advocated for Russia's readmission to global sports competition, including the Paralympic Games, directly contradicting the position of European allies. In January 2026, he met Russia's sports minister during talks organised by the Olympic Council of Asia. When Russia's participation in the Paralympics was confirmed, he wrote publicly: "I believe sport is for everyone." Ukraine announced it would boycott the opening ceremony. Italy, the host nation, expressed its "absolute disagreement" with the decision. Zampolli was the named US voice endorsing it. His Rome trip featured unannounced meetings with a minister documented to have Russia sympathies and connections. In April 2026, he sat alongside Vice President JD Vance in Budapest in support of Viktor Orbán, assessed as a Russian intelligence asset by the CIA, ahead of Hungarian elections. Orbán lost those elections days later.

Zampolli's name appears in the released Epstein files. Epstein patronised ID Model Management. In 2004, Zampolli and Epstein jointly attempted to buy Elite Model Management at public auction, a bid that failed but that documents their shared financial interests in the modeling industry at exactly the time Ungaro was newly in New York.

A proffer document in the released files, designated EFTA00105195, from a cooperating witness interview conducted three days after Epstein's 2019 arrest, claims under penalty of federal prosecution that it was Epstein, not Zampolli, who introduced Melania to Trump. A proffer agreement means false statements carry criminal liability. Zampolli calls the claim false. No committee has subpoenaed him. No sworn proceeding has examined it. As of April 2026, the document sits in the released files with no official response to it.

Zampolli was also named a partner in Ghislaine Maxwell's Sustainable Oceans Alliance, closely associated with her TerraMar Project. The DOJ and U.S. law enforcement treat TerraMar as a fraudulent charity that served as a financial vehicle for Maxwell's activities. TerraMar shut down within days of Epstein's 2019 arrest, without explanation.

His social and business world overlaps, repeatedly and specifically, with people who have criminal records or documented involvement in fraud and organized crime. He dined, by his own account, twice daily at Cipriani in New York, owned by Giuseppe Cipriani, who appears in Epstein's black book. He maintained close ties with Flavio Briatore, a man New York Magazine described as "a convicted card cheat, and an accused Formula 1 race fixer" and a longtime fugitive from a Virgin Islands fraud case. Briatore also appears as a mutual Trump acquaintance in documents connected to the Epstein investigation. A colleague of Zampolli's at the United Nations was later arrested for taking bribes from a Chinese billionaire with documented connections to organized crime and the Chinese Communist Party, a case that Brazilian investigators noted intersected with Epstein's network. Another colleague died under circumstances investigators described as "exceedingly bizarre."

Zampolli was also implicated in the Harvey Weinstein case, though not charged. Weinstein victim Melissa Thompson alleged publicly that Zampolli had used deceptive tactics to cause her to believe that two lawyers, Brafman and Spiro, were working for the victims, when they were in fact working for Weinstein. She said the deception led her to inadvertently share her evidence with Weinstein's legal team. Thompson's allegation was specific and on record. Zampolli denied it. He has never been charged with any crime in connection with any of these matters.

When Ungaro arrived in New York in 2002, fresh off Epstein's plane, Zampolli was the person who gave her a world to inhabit. She was seventeen when they met. She was, by reporting from Newsweek, nineteen when the romantic relationship began. He was fifteen years older than her. She had just spent a transatlantic flight in the company of a convicted child rapist, placed there by the man who was one of that rapist's primary suppliers of girls. The person waiting for her on the other end of that journey ran modeling agencies, knew Epstein, had tried to buy Epstein's business partner's company, and would go on to become a United States government official under the administration of one of Epstein's closest friends, Donald Trump.

Two Decades in the Orbit

Ungaro and Zampolli were together for the better part of twenty years. They had a son, now approximately fifteen or sixteen years old. Both were appointed to United Nations ambassadorial roles by Donald Trump, Zampolli for Dominica (of which he is not a citizen), Ungaro for Grenada, facilitated through Zampolli's political connections. They attended Donald Trump's first inauguration in January 2017 and sat at Melania's table during the dinner that followed. They rang in 2022 together at Mar-a-Lago.Getty Images holds over three hundred photographs of Ungaro at diplomatic receptions, galas, and events alongside Zampolli, in rooms that frequently included figures from the Trump orbit. These were not peripheral appearances. They were fixtures.

Zampolli had previously lived with Edit Molnar, a Hungarian model, until at least 1996. She was Melania's close friend at the agency, and according to Zampolli himself it was Edit who persuaded Melania to attend the 1998 Kit Kat Club party where she met Trump, making the woman who allegedly connected Melania to the Donald Trump, Zampolli's previous girlfriend.

The Zampolli Parties

His Washington parties featured crowds skewing toward older men and younger women. When Zampolli relocated to Washington in October 2020 following Trump's appointment of him to the Kennedy Center board, he brought his New York lifestyle with him intact. He held court five days a week at a standing table at Café Milano and hosted after-parties at his 14,000-square-foot mansion, which featured a wine cellar, a sauna, a heated pool, and a dance floor. The walls displayed a photograph of Tony Blair scribbling on the Chilcot Report, a painting of Barack Obama smoking, a photograph of George W. Bush struggling with a Rubik's Cube, and multiple massive images of Trump.

"He was the continuation of Trump's Sodom and Gomorrah. I told Paolo many times to cool off, this is not New York."

Multiple attendees described the scene as deeply out of place for Washington, particularly during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Zampolli dismissed the concern. "Every invite said social distancing is available. There's a lot of room," he said. "There were no other events, so there was no other place to go. People would come and bring other people. There would be five losers and one good one, and that was the concept. I was generous. I was feeding a lot of freeloaders."

Three separate attendees described the crowds as skewing heavily toward older men and younger women. His guest lists included lobbyists for disreputable industries and diplomats from countries with poor human rights records, described collectively by one attendee as "questionable folks." One of Zampolli's own friends, who was among the dozen recipients of the explicit text messages he later circulated, summarised the Washington period this way: "He was the continuation of Trump's Sodom and Gomorrah. I told Paolo many times to cool off, this is not New York." Ungaro and Giovanni were still in New York during this period.

The Affair

In 2021, Politico reported that Zampolli had circulated explicit messages and screenshots from an affair he had been conducting behind Ungaro's back to roughly a dozen Washington lobbyists and power brokers. In one of the messages, Zampolli wrote directly to the woman: "Please stay away from my family, you are a pro, all city knows you are a working girl, since day one you said I had to pay you." The woman denied it. "Any accusations about me being a 'working girl' or that I trade 'sex for money' are entirely false," she told Politico. "We had a brief consensual relationship, but I learned he was dishonest about the nature of his relationship with the mother of his son and no longer wanted to be involved with him." The woman said they had a consensual affair. Zampolli claimed she was a sex worker trying to extort him. Either way, he chose to distribute sexually explicit material and private exchanges about her to his professional network. Her age was not reported. What the Politico investigation did document was that Zampolli's Washington social scene during this period featured crowds described by multiple attendees as skewing heavily toward older men and younger women. Ungaro did not leave immediately. She stayed for two more years. By 2023 she was done.

The Arrest, the ICE Call, and the Deportation

In June 2025, Ungaro and her husband were arrested in Miami after an anonymous Crime Stoppers tip. The charges related to allegedly unlicensed cosmetic procedures at a medical spa in Aventura where she worked as a receptionist. Both pleaded not guilty.

Her husband held a green card and was released on bail. Ungaro had no current lawful immigration status. Her last temporary visa had expired in 2019. ICE placed her on an immigration hold. Paolo Zampolli, on learning that Ungaro was in a Miami jail, contacted David Venturella, a senior ICE official. He told Venturella that Ungaro was in the country illegally. He told him that her immigration detention would help him gain custody of their child. Venturella then called ICE's Miami field office. During that call, according to the Times, Venturella noted that the case was important to someone close to the White House. ICE agents collected Ungaro before she could post bail.

Zampolli holds a formal appointment as Special Envoy for Global Partnerships under the executive branch of the United States government. He used that position's proximity to the White House, through a senior enforcement official he could call directly, to ensure that the woman contesting him in a custody dispute was taken into immigration detention before she could be released on bail. ICE, which in the current administration has operated with expanded authority, minimal independent oversight, and significant deference to political interests, became the instrument through which a Trump-connected official resolved a private family dispute. The underlying immigration violation was real. The enforcement timing was not coincidental.

Ungaro spent three and a half months in immigration detention centers before being transferred to a facility in Louisiana. She described conditions inside: an elderly woman handcuffed to a wheelchair, a detainee who miscarried and waited an extended period before receiving medical attention. There were also, she said, numerous people being held who had valid residency permits. She eventually requested deportation to Brazil. She was deported there in 2025.

"It was not enough for him to destroy me during 20 years of relationship," Ungaro told El País. "He wanted to destroy me again when I started a new life, when I got married."

She had come to the United States in 2002 on Epstein's plane, placed there by Brunel's network. She had spent two decades building a life here. She had a teenage son. She had pending charges she was prepared to contest in court. And when she tried to use the American legal system to assert custody rights over her child, a US government official who had known her for twenty years called an enforcement agency on her behalf, noted the White House connection, and had her removed from the country before she could make bail. Her son remained in the United States. "It was not enough for him to destroy me during 20 years of relationship," Ungaro told El País. "He wanted to destroy me again when I started a new life, when I got married." Zampolli denied requesting her detention or seeking any favours. "Any suggestion that she was arrested and removed for political reasons or favors is FALSE," the Department of Homeland Security told the Times. A spokesperson for the First Lady said Melania had "no knowledge of, or involvement in" the personal affairs of Zampolli and Ungaro.

The Posts, and the Collision

On April 7 to 9, 2026, Ungaro posted a series of messages on X directed at Melania Trump's archived @FLOTUS45 account. They accumulated hundreds of thousands of views.

"I have known you for 20 years. You knew I was detained in ICE. You were present in my life – every year on my son's birthday, even sending Secret Service and being the first to congratulate him, back in 2016. Something was clearly wrong, but I am not part of any evil mission involving children."

"I will tear down your corrupt system, even if it's the last thing I do in my life. I will go all the way – I am not afraid. Maybe you should be afraid of what I know."

She also posted directly at Pam Bondi, then days away from defying a congressional subpoena: "Are you already aware of the situation? Do you fully understand the extent of the information I possess regarding you and the individuals associated with you?"

Ungaro's specific claims about the personal depth of her relationship with Melania Trump, Melania's awareness of her ICE detention, and the content of what she says she knows have not been independently verified. The first two, given what is documented about how closely Ungaro and Zampolli traveled in Trump social circles across nearly a decade of shared events, are not implausible. They remain unverified.

Melania's Statement

On April 9, 2026, Melania Trump walked into the Grand Foyer of the White House and delivered a prepared statement of approximately six minutes. The timing, CNN reported based on two people familiar with the matter, was driven by her monthslong preoccupation with press coverage and internet speculation about her relationship with Epstein. Her husband told the New York Times he knew she had wanted to address the topic at some point but confirmed he did not know what she planned to say and did not watch the remarks in real time.

From the statement: "I am not Epstein's victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump. I met my husband, by chance, at a New York City party in 1998. The first time I crossed paths with Epstein was in the year 2000, at an event Donald and I attended together. At the time, I had never met Epstein and had no knowledge of his criminal undertakings."

She addressed the released email. In 2002, Melania had written to Ghislaine Maxwell complimenting how Maxwell looked in a photograph and inviting her to call "when you are back in NY," signing it "Love, Melania." Maxwell responded, addressing her as "sweet pea." Melania described the email in her statement as "casual correspondence" and "a trivial note." She added: "To be clear, I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice, Maxwell."

Her lawyers had previously secured retractions and apologies from The Daily Beast, HarperCollins Publishers, and Democratic strategist James Carville in connection with separate Epstein-related claims.

The statement closed with a call for congressional action: "I call on Congress to provide the women who have been victimized by Epstein with a public hearing specifically centered around the survivors. Give these victims their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress, with the power of sworn testimony."

This directly undercut West Wing messaging aimed at putting the Epstein story behind the administration, and renewed press attention on it at a moment when it was competing with coverage of the conflict with Iran.

Epstein survivors Maria and Annie Farmer responded: "What we want is accountability, transparency, and justice." A group of thirteen Epstein survivors and relatives accused the first lady of placing the burden on survivors rather than on those in positions of institutional power. "Survivors have done their part. Now it's time for those in power to do theirs," they said.

Both Rep. Nancy Mace and Rep. Robert Garcia endorsed the call for a public hearing. House Oversight Chairman James Comer committed on Fox News: "I agree with the first lady. We will have hearings."

The Broader Congressional Context

The statement arrived into a week already consumed by the Epstein investigation. Pam Bondi, fired by Trump on April 2 after reports he was dissatisfied with her handling of the DOJ's Epstein files, had been scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee on April 14 under a bipartisan subpoena. The DOJ informed the committee she would not appear, arguing the subpoena had named her in her capacity as attorney general and that she no longer held that office.

Rep. Nancy Mace responded: "My subpoena still stands... I did it by name, not as the sitting Attorney General." Rep. Robert Garcia threatened contempt charges.

The committee has also scheduled Bill Gates for a deposition on June 10. An NPR investigation in February found that documents naming the president had been withheld from the files, some of which were later published. What Trump said in 2002, in a New York magazine profile published in the same period that Ungaro was boarding Epstein's plane in Paris: "I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."

Now It's War

A teenage girl was placed by her agent, a man who funded his primary modeling agency with Epstein's money and visited a convicted pedophile seventy times in jail, on that pedophile's private aircraft. She survived that flight. She then spent two decades inside a social world where the rapist, the procurer, the convicted trafficker, and the president's closest social circle all occupied the same rooms, attended the same events, and built the same businesses. When she tried to use the U.S. legal system to secure custody of her child, the man she'd spent those two decades with used his White House access to contact a senior enforcement official, noted that the case mattered to someone close to power, and had her deported before she could post bail.

Zampolli told Sky News he is "ready to testify in front of Congress if I'm asked" about how Donald and Melania met. He has denied requesting Ungaro's ICE detention. He has not been charged with any crime in connection with Jeffrey Epstein or any other matter. He claims that he is "ready to testify in front of Congress if I'm asked." He has not been subpoenaed. He is, as of this writing, one of two people in the inner circle of the Trump White House with documented connections to the Epstein-Brunel modeling pipeline. The other is the president himself.

Ungaro has not been formally called to testify in front of Congress. Whether she could do so from Brazil is unresolved. "I kept quiet for years," she told El País. "It was not enough for him to destroy me during 20 years: he wanted to destroy me again when I started a new life."

"Now it's war," Ungaro said from Rio. "We'll see who wins."

This article is part of an ongoing investigative series on the Epstein files, the networks they document, and what genuine accountability would require.

OpDeathEaters was founded by Heather Marsh in 2014 with a central objective: an independent, internationally linked, victim-led tribunal and inquiry into the child rape and trafficking industry, independent of all institutions potentially being investigated for complicity. Follow OpDeathEaters on X: @OpDeathEaters. On BlueSky: bsky.app/profile/opdeatheaters.