Jeffrey Epstein arrested: Israeli-American pedo ring to be exposed?
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Unlimited Hangout (Mark Goodwin & Whitney Webb) did some investigation and wrote a Huuuuge piece last August on the relationships between all these personas, but mostly focused on Paolo Zampolli
First Friends: How the First Couple’s Consigliere Went From Modeling Mogul to Special Envoy
I am pasting only a small piece of it here, and you can read it in its entirety through the link above. I repeat, it's huuuuuge! I scanned through some paragraphs but haven't had the time to read the entire thing (did I say it's huuuuge!?)
Zampolli’s Italian Beginnings and Early Connections
Paolo Zampolli was born in Milan to an elite family that had become even wealthier due to the success of the Italian toy company Harbert, which licensed American toys (i.e. Star Wars figures and Easy Bake ovens) in Italy. After his father died in a skiing accident when Zampolli was 18, he left college early to take over the company. However, he quickly decided Milan was “too small” for him and his ambitions. In pursuit of something bigger, he decided to sell his family’s company to the Italian mogul and politician Silvio Berlusconi.
A Harbert Star Wars toy from the late 1970s, Source
As noted in Part I of this series, Berlusconi was a member of the notorious freemasonic lodge P2, which was at the heart of the European nexus that united organized crime as well as U.S. and allied intelligence agencies with powerful politicians and business leaders, many of whom were fascist sympathizers. Berlusconi’s own mysterious rise was reportedly enabled directly by P2, as his early trajectory to becoming a billionaire and later Italy’s Prime Minister reportedly began with an infusion of capital from mysterious sources (masked by a maze of holding companies) shortly after he joined the lodge. Berlusconi’s political career would later be marred by scandal after he was convicted of hiring an “underage prostitute” and hosting “bunga bunga” parties where he had orgies with young women and teen girls. The acts that were a focus of that case occurred while Berlusconi was Prime Minister.
Zampolli remained an admirer of Berlusconi from the late 1980s through his death in 2023. Zampolli also cultivated ties to one of the late Prime Minister’s closest pals, Flavio Briatore, which persist to the present. The ties of Briatore to organized crime as well as P2, the Epstein/Maxwell network and Donald Trump were the focus of Part I of this series.
After Berlusconi bought his company, Zampolli became involved in the modeling industry. However, it’s not exactly clear how he first got his start in model management. Zampolli himself has hinted that it began with his childhood fascination with John Casablancas, the controversial founder of Elite Model Management. Zampolli has claimed to have actually spent vacations with Casablancas when he was a child vacationing at his family’s home in Ibiza, Spain. “I had John Casablancas spending the summer [with] me when I was a kid,” Zampolli once told Vanity Fair in 2001. The Vanity Fair article also notes that Zampolli later accompanied Casablancas on scouting trips to Eastern Europe, though the dates aren’t provided. Casablancas corroborated his early ties to Zampolli, as he was once quoted as saying “I’ve known Paolo from before the beginning.”
By 1994, Zampolli had become the lead organizer of the Look of the Year contest in Ibiza. According to Zampolli himself, he was chosen to organize the contest in 1994 because he “brought to the table Club Med and Italian TV!” Club Med, i.e. Club Méditerranée, was acquired in the 1960s by a group led by Baron Edmond de Rothschild after he “visited a Club Med in Israel and liked it. Baron Edmond not only paid Club Med’s debts, but acquired a 34 percent stake in the growing tour operator.” Joining the French Rothschild interests in that group was the Gunzberg family, which – at that point – had intermarried with the organized crime-adjacent Bronfman family of Seagrams fame. The notorious frontman of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) Ghaith Pharaon was also a shareholder in Club Med and used his shares in it to secure lines of credit from BCCI, which was tied to intelligence services, drug cartels and organized crime from its founding up until its collapse in 1991. Jeffrey Epstein, who also entered the world of modeling in the 1990s and was a reported friend of Zampolli’s, was tied to BCCI in the 1980s as were some of Epstein’s 80s-era clients, such as weapons dealer and intelligence asset Adnan Khashoggi. It is unclear how Zampolli became connected with Club Med, but his ties to Italian TV were likely related to Silvio Berlusconi, whose assets included numerous Italian television channels and who has been referred to as “the father of Italian broadcasting.” This would suggest that Zampolli’s ties to Berlusconi persisted after the sale of his family company.
The annual Look of the Year contest that Zampolli organized was put on by Casablanca’s Elite Model Management. However, the top Elite executive that managed the competitions during the late 1980s and 1990s was the then-head of the European branch of Elite Models, Gerald Marie. Marie’s modeling agency Paris Planning had merged with Casablanca’s agency in 1986. Marie has since been accused of a litany of sexual assaults and rapes during the 1980s and 1990s by several well-known and lesser known models, accusations which have been deemed credible by Marie’s wife at the time. Some of Marie’s accusers have alleged that they were “trafficked” by Marie to “wealthy men across Europe for purposes wholly unrelated to modeling.” One of Marie’s accusers, Jill Dodd, has claimed that she and others “were just young, and being taken advantage of, and groomed and sold by our agents.” Dodd said that, after being raped by Marie, the agency set her up and pressured her into a relationship with the aforementioned Adnan Khashoggi. Dodd says she later discovered that Marie’s modeling agency at the time (Paris Planning) had been paid $50,000 by Khashoggi to arrange their meeting. Marie was later reportedly involved with MC2, the modeling agency created by Jean Luc Brunel and funded by Jeffrey Epstein that became a major focus of investigations into Epstein’s sex trafficking.
News coverage of the Zampolli-organized 1994 Look of the Year contest noted that underage girls from around the world were asked to attend and were flown out to the contest without their parents, despite “being so young.” Male “chaperones” were then assigned to the teens, with one such “chaperone” named Pat Lanzillo remarking that he was reminded of how young these “beautiful” teens were when some called their parents crying. The report also notes how the teens were taken to a “wild” nightclub on the island for their “night off.”
Elite’s Look of Year contests, including those hosted alongside Donald Trump at the then Trump-owned Plaza Hotel in 1991 and 1992, have come under scrutiny after former contestants have alleged that they were groomed, assaulted and raped by powerful men in the industry like Gerald Marie. Notably, Elite’s Casablancas met his third wife at a 1993 Elite Model competition, Brazilian model Aline Wermelinger –– then a school-girl –– who married Casablancas at 17. Casablancas was controversial for accusations that he exploited and abused many of his young and often underage models and for frankly expressing his sexual preference for teenagers, whom he referred to as “child women.”
While running the 1994 Elite competition in Ibiza, the New York Times reported that Zampolli was reportedly urged by Casablancas to move to New York to work in the modeling business there. Zampolli moved to New York City not long after, arriving in 1995, and rented an apartment in Union Square. He soon met Donald Trump, “whose grandiosity he admired” and who, like Zampolli, “was a fixture on the city’s nightclub circuit.” In discussing his earliest meeting with Trump, Zampolli once said “We both have a common interest. We both like beautiful things.”
Though it is unclear exactly how Zampolli first met Trump or who introduced them, it was likely through John Casablancas or another figure at Elite. Casablancas and Trump had been publicly affiliated since the early 1990s. In addition, Casablancas was known to host parties at the notorious nightclub Studio 54, whose co-owner Ian Schrager, was the son of an associate of mobster Meyer Lansky, and whose lawyer was also Trump’s lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn. Cohn was involved in a sex blackmail ring at the Plaza Hotel, which Trump later bought after Cohn’s death. He was also a close associate of New York organized crime interests and served as a lawyer for infamous mob bosses like Tony Salerno. Trump, during the 1980s, was a regular at Elite’s Studio 54 events. During this period, Trump has been alleged to have frequently partied with two men in particular: Tom Barrack, a long-time Trump associate and founder of Colony Capital who now serves as U.S. ambassador to Turkey, and Jeffrey Epstein, the now-notorious sex trafficker with ties to covert arms trafficking networks and financial criminality during this period. Four former Elite models have said that Casablancas’ agency required them to attend private dinners with Trump in the late 1980s and early 1990s, though importantly none of them accused Trump of wrongdoing. It does, however, corroborate that Elite Model Management as a company pushed its models to engage in social activities wholly unrelated to modeling with powerful people.
In 1991, Trump and Casablancas struck a business deal that saw Trump’s Plaza Hotel host the Look of the Year competition. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, would later model for Elite beginning at age 15. Elite has since been criticized for sexualizing a then-teen Ivanka. Trump and Casablancas were reportedly good friends, though Trump, after becoming a politician, has claimed to have hardly known Casablancas, who had — by that point — become infamous. Trump has espoused similar rhetoric about another one-time friend who also later became infamous – Jeffrey Epstein.
Even though Casablancas had been the apparent impetus for Zampolli’s move to New York, Zampolli didn’t work at Elite Models once he was in the U.S. Instead, he became co-president of Metropolitan Models after purchasing the agency soon after making the move. Metropolitan Models’ most famous model was Claudia Schiffer who met and became engaged to the magician David Copperfield while with the agency. Copperfield, a friend of Zampolli’s, was also close to Jeffrey Epstein. Evidence shows the two were in close contact in the early 2000s and Copperfield has also been named by at least two Epstein victims who say they were present for Epstein’s meetings with Copperfield. Copperfield has also, in no relation to the Epstein case, been accused of sexual misconduct by at least a dozen women, three of whom said they were drugged by the well-known magician. Copperfield was later a member of a four-person dinner party that included Donald Trump, Melania Trump and Zampolli during which Trump offered Zampolli a job at the Trump Organization.
That meeting took place at Zampolli’s favorite New York restaurant Cipriani’s, where Zampolli reportedly dines twice a day every day when in the city. Zampolli is a long-time close personal friend of Cipriani’s owner Giuseppe Cipriani. The New York restaurant was opened by Cipriani’s father in 1985 after the success of the family’s restaurant and hotel businesses in Italy. The Cipriani family has been accused of mob affiliations, with Giuseppe allegedly paying organized crime figures a handsome sum to make the family’s issues with labor unions “go away.” Giuseppe denied the charges.
However, shortly thereafter it was reported that the Vice President of Cipriani, Dennis Pappas, had previously done prison time related to his past role as the “finance man” for the Colombo crime family –– a fact that would have been known to the Cipriani family at the time of his hire. Pappas was indicted in 2006 for fraud while serving as a top Cipriani executive, prompting the company to distance themselves and claim that his title as company Vice President was largely “ceremonial.” That same year, the Cipriani’s became business partners of Steve Witkoff, the New York real estate developer who now serves as Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. A year later, in 2007, Giuseppe and his father, Arrigo Cipriani, pled guilty to tax evasion as well as filing false tax returns.
After a temporary exile following his guilty plea and the revelation of Pappas’ mob ties, Giuseppe Cipriani returned to New York with the goal of creating a new “private member’s lounge” away “from the prying eyes of the press.” One report describes this time as follows:
Finally allowed to return to NYC, the Ciprianis insisted on being away from the cameras where possible and Giuseppe’s celebrity friends could not agree more. Leonardo di Caprio was an immediate fan, spending an enormous amount of time at Socialista [the name of the private member’s lounge] and being joined by a famously never-ending rotation of Victoria[’s] Secret Models and fellow actors.
One wonders why Cipriani’s new bar would feature so many models associated with one particular brand. However, one clue may be found in the entry for Cipriani in Jeffrey Epstein’s black book. Epstein, at the time, was closely affiliated with Victoria’s Secret and its models via his extremely close and long-time personal and professional relationship with the brand’s owner, Leslie Wexner. Cipriani is also, notably, a friend of Flavio Briatore, the subject of Part I of this series, who introduced the supermodel Naomi Campbell (then a fixture at Victoria’s Secret fashion shows) to Epstein in the early 2000s. Epstein’s former butler Alfredo Rodriguez had circled Briatore’s name in the black book, fingering him and others as accessories and accomplices to Epstein’s sex crimes.
Cipriani was also good friends with another infamous sex criminal, Harvey Weinstein. Not only did the two friends invest in each other’s businesses, but Weinstein reportedly used Cipriani’s restaurant and his private member’s lounge Socialista as his “hunting grounds,” per reports. Cipriani allegedly facilitated Weinstein’s predatory behavior at these locations. For instance, one accuser claimed that her friend was prevented from going to find her by Cipriani’s security after Weinstein had quickly whisked her off to an upstairs suite. Those suites were reportedly used by Weinstein as his personal “sex pads” with Cipriani’s permission. Cipriani was questioned for his ties to Weinstein but was never charged. Several of the lawsuits against Weinstein for sexual assault and rape claimed that the events in question had occurred at Cipriani’s.
Benjamin Brafman and Harvey Weinstein walk in New York City in December 2018, Source
Zampolli himself also has an unusual tie to the Weinstein scandal. In 2017, Zampolli contacted women he knew had been assaulted by Weinstein, urging them to contact lawyer Benjamin Brafman (and other lawyers at his firm Brafman & Associates) and file a lawsuit against Weinstein. In an audio recording provided by one of the women to the New York Times, Zampolli claims to have had a “falling-out” with Weinstein and that he wanted to “bury” him, urging the woman to file suit against Weinstein. “You gonna be represented by the biggest lawyer that existed in United States history. There are all these girls, and they’re getting together and they’re being represented by Benjamin Brafman,” Zampolli said in the recording. Some of the women then went to Brafman’s firm where they presented evidence and were asked about their traumatic encounters with Weinstein. However, it turned out Brafman had actually been hired as Harvey Weinstein’s defense lawyer, not as a lawyer for victims, a move that was publicly announced just weeks later. Zampolli called the recording of his conversation urging a victim to contact Brafman as “fake news.”
The Modeling Mogul
Zampolli’s time at Metropolitan Models was cut short in 1997 after he sued his partner Thomas Zeumer, alleging that “corporate funds were missing.” Zampolli sued to dissolve his partnership with Zeumer, but the case was later dismissed. Zampolli then bought American Models, which he turned into ID Models.
Cover image of the Vanity Fair article on Zampolli and ID Models from 2001, Source
In the 2011 Italian language book Gli Italiani di New York, Zampolli is quoted as follows about his approach to the modeling business:
The models have to travel the world, they are not sedentary – he says, sipping champagne with his gaze always on his blackberry – we had an office in Brazil where we found them and then moved them continuously from Miami to Berlin, from Paris to Milan, always keeping about seventy of them in New York. For years, the business [i.e. ID models] has produced money and become well known in the world of VIPs – from Bill Clinton to the rulers of the Gulf up to Shimon Peres to Donald Trump […].
It is unclear how the “continuous” movement of young Brazilian women and girls throughout and between Europe and the U.S. would lead to the business becoming well known to “VIPs,” with those VIPs having little to do with the modeling industry as they are major politicians. However, it seems to align with some of the activities in which the agency of his mentor, John Casablancas, had engaged. It also raises the possibility that, as we shall see, Zampolli’s modeling agency may have been more than just that.
First of all, the VIPs Zampolli names all have ties to the Epstein/Maxwell network. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton has been extensively linked to Epstein and was known to travel alongside teens on Epstein’s jet. Trump, close to Zampolli and friendly with his apparent mentor Casablancas as well as having once been close to Epstein, has also been accused of inappropriate behavior towards women and models. Trump, after divorcing Marla Maples, dated a women that had previously accompanied Jeffrey Epstein to the Clinton White House under dubious circumstances named Celina Midelfart. Trump later left Midelfart for one of Zampolli’s models, Melania Knauss, now Melania Trump (more on that later).
As noted in Part I of this series, Epstein’s butler Alfredo Rodriguez had circled Trump’s name in the now infamous black book, alleging that he was involved in Epstein’s sex crimes in some capacity. Shimon Peres, the former Prime Minister of Israel, was close to Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, Robert Maxwell, and maintained close ties until his death to her sister, Isabel Maxwell. Peres is also the person who introduced Ehud Barak to Epstein, according to Barak (though other evidence suggests that Barak and Epstein may have met much earlier). Barak, like Flavio Briatore and Trump, is a circled name in Epstein’s black book and other evidence has suggested he was linked to Epstein’s illicit activity.
In addition, Zampolli’s claim that his agency finds its models in Brazil is worth examining. Elsewhere, Zampolli has suggested that many of the models he recruited from Brazil were teens, which is unsurprising given his emulation of John Casablancas. In one article where Zampolli was asked about his most famous former model, current First Lady Melania Trump, he stated that “She was mature, she was 24 years old, not like those 14 year old models from the middle of Brazil.” There is also the fact that Zampolli’s wife Amanda Ungaro –– a Brazilian model who he married when she was 19 –– appears on the Epstein flight logs in the company of Jean Luc Brunel when she was a minor.
In the late 1990s, Zampolli became friendly with Jean Luc Brunel, who rented an apartment at Trump Tower in Manhattan. According to fashion photographer Clayton Nelson, he recalled an incident at a restaurant where he claims to have seen Brunel, Zampolli and Trump “insistently following a model.” Clayton told French media that he had “asked Brunel: ‘Do we have a fucking problem here?’, says the photographer. ‘Zere is no problem’, replied the Frenchman.” One newspaper article from 1997 notes that Zampolli and Brunel were known to swim in similar circles at the time, having been invited to a showcase for new models by the agency Model Team. The article shows Model Team’s John Merriman posing with Brunel. It also notes that Zampolli had his birthday party that year in Paris at a massive apartment on L’Avenue Foch, the street where Epstein later bought an 8 room apartment in 2002 that would later feature prominently in sex trafficking probes against him and Brunel in France.
Brunel, another circled name in Epstein’s black book, is a well-known alleged accomplice of Epstein’s trafficking operation who, like Epstein, “committed suicide” while awaiting trial in prison in 2022. Brunel had been arrested in 2020 and was accused of rape, trafficking and “pimping out” aspiring models to Epstein. The same year Brunel died in person, the man who had facilitated Epstein’s visits to the Clinton White House with various women, Mark Middleton, was also found dead, but his death was labeled a suicide despite the fact that the condition in which his body was found made suicide extremely unlikely (more on that later).
According to one lawsuit filed against Epstein in 2018, Brunel and his Epstein-funded modeling agency MC2 was known to “recruit girls as young as 13 from Europe, Ecuador and Brazil.” Brunel, on a flight accompanying Epstein from New York to Paris, brought one underage Brazilian teen with him named Amanda Ungaro. The flight coincided with Epstein’s purchase of his luxurious French apartment later linked to trafficking. Ungaro, who was born in 1986, was underage at the time, either 16 or 17 years old.
A few years later, Ungaro married Paolo Zampolli, though they claim to have been dating for some time before their marriage. In 2001, one year before Ungaro flew on Epstein’s plane, Zampolli was quoted by Vanity Fair as courting a “young model” who lived in Brazil, anonymously sending her Easter eggs and teddy bears to Brazil before they had even “gotten together.” It’s unclear if the young Brazilian model alluded to here is Ungaro, who would have been 15 or 16 at the time. Presumably, Zampolli and Ungaro were introduced by Brunel, but this is hard to know as all information about Ungaro’s early life and modeling career prior to her marriage to Zampolli –– e.g. how she met Zampolli, what agencies she first modeled for, etc. –– is incredibly difficult to ascertain from publicly available sources. The earliest online pictures of her modeling and socializing are from 2005, when she was 19 (the age she married Zampolli).
In addition to these connections, there is also the fact that Adriana Ross, one of Epstein’s alleged accomplices who is still protected under the terms of the so-called “sweetheart deal” from Epstein’s 2007 prosecution was formerly a model of both Casablancas’ Elite Models and Zampolli’s ID models before she joined Epstein’s entourage, according to Epstein case documents. Ross stated that her husband, who she met shortly after Elite brought her to the U.S. from Poland, “had the contact” that put her in touch with ID Models. In a deposition, Ross pleaded the fifth when asked about her career history between ID Models and Epstein. Ross was named an unindicted “possible co-conspirator” in Epstein’s 2008 plea deal due to evidence that she procured teens for Epstein, helped destroy and hide evidence prior to a police raid of his Palm Beach home and determined how and when victims would meet with Epstein. Another former model for Elite, Nicole Junkermann, also cultivated close ties to Epstein during the early 2000s, flying on his plane to the UK where he met with two U.S. Senators under mysterious circumstances.
Jeffrey Epstein and Adriana Ross, Source
Zampolli himself is also alleged to have had a relationship with Epstein prior to his becoming infamous, albeit according to controversial author Michael Wolff. However, following Epstein’s infamy, Zampolli made it clear to the New York Times that he had long known of Epstein, claiming that “Epstein’s recruiters were so rampant in Manhattan that they became known in the modeling and nightclub world as ‘Jeffrey’s girls.’” The extent of the relationship between Zampolli and Epstein is unknown, though Zampolli clearly swam in similar circles in both the late 1990s and early 2000s.
For instance, in addition to his ties to Trump, Briatore and other Epstein pals of the period, Zampolli was close to figures that took infamous flights on Epstein’s plane, like billionaire Ron Burkle, former president Bill Clinton and long-time Clinton adviser Doug Band. Per Zampolli, he first met Hillary Clinton at Trump’s wedding to Melania after being introduced by her long-time aide Huma Abedin, whom he claimed to know “from events in New York.” He claimed to have met Bill Clinton “many, many, many” times before Trump’s wedding, apparently alluding to his earlier quote of his modeling company becoming well known among “VIPs” including Clinton. However, in 2016 –– when Hillary Clinton and Trump were both running for president –– Zampolli told the New York Times that Clinton “was not coming to parties with me and the models.” Zampolli affectionately calls Doug Band “Dougie.” In a 2009 interview, Zampolli praised Bill Clinton as a “genius” and stated he also had much admiration for Hillary.
Zampolli was also close to Ron Burkle in the early 2000s, the billionaire owner of several U.S. supermarket chains who hired Bill Clinton at his firm Yucaipa Companies shortly after Clinton left office. The pair then flew together with Clinton on Epstein’s plane to Africa, a trip which focused on Clinton jump-starting Africa-focused initiatives of the Clinton Foundation. Burkle was also closely linked to the rapper Diddy and to the late pop singer Michael Jackson. Burkle, who also lent private planes to Bill Clinton, allegedly considered buying Casablancas’ Elite Models in 2002, with reporting on the matter implying that Burkle planned to put Clinton in charge of it. (Notably, two years later, in 2004, Zampolli as well as Jeffrey Epstein unsuccessfully bid to purchase Elite.) Beginning with this 2002 story about an alleged Burkle attempt to purchase Elite, Burkle contacted his friend Zampolli to help manage what he viewed as bad press. Zampolli arranged a meeting between the article’s author and Burkle. The meeting ended “amicably” with an associate of Burkle’s who joined the meeting paying the journalist $5,700 for shirts from his fledgling clothing company. Zampolli offered his services to Burkle more than once, including after a news item was published in 2006 alleging that an unnamed “babe-loving billionaire” was checking the ages of the “young models he invites on his private jet.” Burkle believed the billionaire in question was him.
Meeting Melania
Perhaps Zampolli’s most well-known tie to the modeling world is through his connection to Melania Knauss, now Melania Trump, Donald Trump’s third wife and current First Lady of the United States. Zampolli is known to have been responsible for bringing Melania to the United States to work as a model, later securing her a visa. Zampolli claims to have discovered Melania at a modeling agency in 1995 and Melania has also stated she first met Zampolli that year. She subsequently obtained a H1-B visa for “skilled” workers in October 1996 with Zampolli’s help. However, some reports have cited documents that Melania had done paid modeling work in the U.S. that had been arranged by Zampolli’s agency before she had actually acquired the H1-B visa that allowed her to legally work. At the time, Zampolli was still at Metropolitan Models, as he did not create ID Models until 1997. He has defended her visa application after scrutiny and accusations that the two ran an escort service in the 1990s. That claim prompted Melania to successfully sue the source of that claim, the UK’s Daily Mail, for defamation.
Zampolli is most often cited as the person who introduced Melania to Donald Trump in 1998 at a party he was hosting at the Kit Kat Club (no relation to Ghislaine Maxwell’s UK-based group of the same name), as both the Trumps and Zampolli have publicly made this claim. However, Jeffrey Epstein is also alleged to have claimed that he first introduced the pair.
Donald Trump, Melania Knauss, “a friend” and Paolo Zampolli, Source
It’s hard to know which claim holds more credibility, particularly in an era where powerful people have gone to great lengths to obfuscate their ties to or distance themselves from Epstein. However, it is worth noting that it is highly likely that Epstein introduced Trump to his girlfriend prior to Melania, Celina Midelfart, a Norwegian heiress. Trump is said to have brought Midelfart as his date to the Zampolli-hosted event where he says he met Melania. Prior to dating Trump, Midelfart had accompanied Epstein to the Clinton White House and was also later photographed with Epstein at a 1995 event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago at age 22. Evidence presented at Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial revealed that Midelfart had been one of Epstein’s girlfriends in the 1990s, with her relationship overlapping with other Epstein girlfriends of that era – Francis Jardine (who Epstein also took to the White House) and Maxwell herself. After dating Epstein, Midelfart began dating Trump. In addition, it seems that Melania may have had more interactions with Epstein than those confirmed by a handful of now well-known photographs. For instance, Melania had her contact information listed in his black book, though it appears under the entry for her now husband Donald Trump. Notably, the circled black book entry for Trump only lists one email address, which was Melania’s then-personal email (melaniakmelania@aol.com). Three numbers for Melania (misspelled Milania) are also listed.
Teaming up with Trump
After failing to obtain the Casablancas-founded Elite Model Management in 2004, Zampolli was hired by his friend of roughly ten years, Donald Trump. However, the possibility of working with Trump had come up a year prior, in November 2003, when Trump and Zampolli flew on a private plane together from Palm Beach to New York. A week later, per The Observer, the possibility of a job was again floated during a dinner at Cipriani’s that was attended by Trump, Melania Trump, Zampolli, and the aforementioned magician, David Copperfield. Zampolli remembered:
“[W]e had dinner together after the Victoria’s Secret show with David Copperfield. And we talked about it over dinner, and I said, ‘Yes, I want to do it.’ Then, three months later, I started to get the classes, the license, the school at NYU where I took the test [to be a realtor].”
In a separate interview, Zampolli stated that Trump had told him the following at the dinner:
“If you lose your supermodel, you go out of business. But if I lose my superintendent, I have a thousand looking for that job the next day. Paolo, you are too good for the fashion industry. You should come work with me.”
Zampolli got the official “You’re hired” from the star of the reality TV series The Apprentice in late 2004, following his failed bid for Elite. He began working as Director of International Development for the Trump Organization. In that role, he was tasked with selling luxury condos in United States, chiefly New York City, as well as more “exotic projects” like Villa Trump in Brazil. He focused on “tak[ing] care of the big, big money people” and made a habit of entertaining prospective buyers in his luxury Maybach sports car.
Trump, when asked about the hire of Zampolli in 2005, stated that: “I’ve known Paolo for a long time. He’s got a great imagination. And in real estate, if you don’t have an imagination, it’s not going to work.” Casablancas, Zampolli’s former mentor, was also interviewed for the same 2005 article in The Observer and argued that Paolo was “going to have to project a more serious image about himself,” moving away from the image he had cultivated as a playboy model mogul in gossip columns to one more befitting a serious, aspiring Manhattan business tycoon.
Paolo Zampolli in front of a Trump Organization plane in an undated photo, Source
Zampolli found working for Trump more difficult than he had anticipated. He told The Observer that “to get a girl from the middle of Brazil that doesn’t speak English [and] put her on the cover of Vogue is very different than building skyscrapers in Manhattan.” Zampolli also stated that he found Trump to be a “tough boss” according to The New York Times.
Zampolli eventually left the Trump Organization in 2006 to start his own real estate firm, the Paramount Group, which soon made headlines for “using former models as brokers to sell luxury apartments.” He combined this with his past strategies at the Trump Organization, dazzling clients with luxury car, speedboat and helicopter rides around New York City. Zampolli has claimed that his company Paramount is “a division in brokerage” with Prudential Douglas Elliman (now known as Douglas Elliman since 2012). At the time Zampolli teamed up with Douglas Elliman, it was owned by Howard Lorber, who – like Zampolli – is a close friend of Trump. Lorber bought the firm from Andrew Farkas, another Trump friend, in the early 2000s. Douglas Elliman later sued Zampolli for several million dollars in 2015 for “hoarding” profits and refusing to give the firm their share.
Zampolli explained his approach to real estate in 2007 to CNBC, stating that models are very “driven” and that these “gorgeous ladies, they meet the most rich and powerful people of the world, and some of them, they keep this connection.”
One model turned broker working for Zampolli told the BBC in 2007 that both professions require “incredible networking skills” and that “if you combine the two industries, you’re left with the same rolodex.” Then, she adds, “you just go through your rolodex and sell houses.” The interview also noted that his Paramount Group sits right next door to his ID models agency.
When CNBC asked prospective buyer Raymond Dowd if being shown a property by a former top model made a difference, he stated that: “Absolutely. Involving supermodels in the process really ensures that there is a commitment to the highest quality of clientele and of living.” The model broker showing Dowd around a property in the interview is Angela Everheart, the former Sports Illustrated model and actress.Everheart had previously been represented by Zampolli’s ID Models in the 1990s and later became known as one of the women who accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual indecency.
In a separate interview with the BBC, Everheart stated: “I know a lot of very wealthy people and I know people all over the world and that people are constantly looking for places to live. If I can network my friends into buildings such as the Cipriani building […] It’s a great way for me to make extra money.” The building to which Everheart referred is the apartment complex that was a joint venture between Giuseppe Cipriani and current envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.
Other reports and interviews allude to Zampolli having had some notable successes in New York real estate, despite issues caused by the 2008 economic crisis. Zampolli, in one interview, attributed his success in real estate due to his sales “rel[ying] a lot on the clients of the Saudi royal family.” He specifically mentioned descendants of the founder and former king of Saudi Arabia, Ibn Saud, who ruled from 1932 to 1953. As noted previously, Zampolli had stated that his movement of models around the world had gained the attention of notable VIPS – among them Bill Clinton, Shimon Peres and Donald Trump, but also “rulers of the Gulf.” As Zampolli and some of his models sought to fuse their work in the modeling industry with New York real estate, it seems likely that the sharing of rolodexes also extended to some of the most powerful figures in Saudi Arabia and perhaps other Gulf kingdoms.
This was confirmed by a Brazilian report on Zampolli and his wife Amanda Ungaro, which stated that Zampolli sold a $35 million dollar home to Qatari royals while also serving in a “diplomatic” post at the United Nations. Notably, that purchase was part of the Qatari emir’s “shopping spree” of Manhattan real estate, which also saw him purchase 22 71st Street East –– a property essentially across the street from Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse.
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