Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had just been released from jail in 2009 when a friend suggested a possible “coming out gift”: a 5-foot-11-inch model with an “amazing” body.
“I was blown away the first time I met her in person, wanted to tear her clothes off immediately,” the friend emailed Epstein, who was still under house arrest. “I really want you to meet her and now she is saying she wants to meet you, so it would be a shame if you didn’t see her before she leaves the country.”
The email came from Ramsey Elkholy, then a New York City modeling agent who was working toward his PhD in social anthropology after living among a remote Indonesian tribe.
The expansive Epstein files released by the Justice Department have exposed the financier’s cozy relationships with high-profile and powerful associates, leading to cascading resignations and public shaming. But a review of the files by The Washington Post also reveals how Epstein cultivated a network of lesser-known associates — including Elkholy and others from the modeling industry — who offered to bring women into his orbit in the years after he was released from jail.
The emails were often crude and sexualized, even if the purpose of the introduction was not explicitly stated. A Swedish modeling scout, for example, messaged about his efforts to find teen girls for Epstein. A Russian model told Epstein by email that another woman would “be very easy” if he told her that she too had potential to become a model. Others sent messages to Epstein describing models he could meet, promising to send photos.
Elkholy’s interactions with Epstein, as detailed in more than 100 emails spanning a decade starting in 2009 and addressed by Elkholy in an hour-long interview with The Post, provide insights into the reasons Elkholy and others repeatedly introduced young women to the financier. Elkholy tried to capitalize on Epstein’s fashion industry connections, he told The Post.
“Everybody wanted to be in the room with Epstein,” he said. “… It’s just the kind of thing where everyone’s trying to get something out [of it].”
Elkholy, now a musician living in California, said he and the models he represented had a financial incentive to meet Epstein: He believed the financier could leverage his connections to help them get work, from which Elkholy would earn a 10 percent commission.
“If a model gets Victoria’s Secret, then it’s not just that I’m just going to get 10 percent, which, by the way, could be very significant,” Elkholy said. “But if she gets Victoria’s Secret, it means her career is made.”
Epstein had long managed the finances of Victoria’s Secret executive Les Wexner, socialized with supermodel Naomi Campbell and became close enough to designer Vera Wang that her publicist wrote in 2010 thathe was “like family.”
Elkholy told The Post that he introduced five or six models to Epstein and that he always chaperoned them during visits to the financier’s Manhattan mansion. The Post reviewed emails showing the men discussing potential meetings with at least two dozen women, including one as young as 18, but could not determine from the files how many of the meetings took place. In some of the emails, Elkholy included photos of the women.
When provided details from those emails, Elkholy responded that “an email about a meeting does not prove a meeting.” He said many of the meetings did not happen.
Elkholy said that he’s “1,000 percent sure” he did nothing illegal and that Epstein never paid him. He said he is “ashamed” of what he wrote, explaining that his crude emails were merely intended to impress or curry favor with Epstein.
“The reason why all of this bodes so terribly for me is because of my potty mouth,” said Elkholy, whose appearance in the Epstein files has drawn media coverage in Digital Music News and the BBC and scrutiny on social media. “I was just being stupid, actually, because all of that language was not based on anything that was happening.”
He added: “You know, this guy had like a thousand victims, and there’s not one that’s connected to me.”
A Polish model reportedly told the Wall Street Journal in 2023 that Elkholy introduced her to Epstein and that Epstein later sexually exploited her during the eight months they spent together. The Post was not able to identify the model, who was not named in the report, or confirm the details of her account. Elkholy said he was not certain of the model’s identity.
Asked about her reported allegation, Elkholy said he should not be blamed if she chose to engage in a “relationship” with Epstein.
“Of the models that I’ve introduced to him, they’ve never come back to me and said they had any problems,” Elkholy said.
Elkholy said the explicit emails he wrote to Epstein give a skewed picture of reality: Models were sometimes “hounding” him to meet Epstein, he said. The models he introduced to Epstein were adults, he said.
In one email to Epstein in 2009, Elkholy described a “very hot blonde” and suggested they could “set up a ‘casting’ of some sort,” adding a caveat: “I know 23 is on the old side for you.” Epstein was in his mid-50s at the time.
When asked about why he put casting in quote marks, Elkholy said meetings with Epstein were often awkward because he might “sit there like for half an hour with his buddies, chatting, and then turn to the model and be like, ‘Oh, what can I do for you?’”
“There were times where I was kind of softly complaining to him, like, ‘Look, this has to be legit,’” Elkholy said.
The only person who has been charged with trafficking girls to Epstein is socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, 64, his former longtime romantic partner, who was convicted of child sex trafficking in 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
In March, dozens of models signed letters to Reps. Ro Khanna (D-California) and Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), who sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and New York Attorney General Letitia James to call for an investigation of how their industry functioned as Epstein’s “recruitment channel.”
Sara Ziff, founding director of the nonprofit Model Alliance, spearheaded the letters, which included the names of a handful of modeling agents and executives who were allegedly close to Epstein. The letter named Elkholy and claimed he was “luring” women to Epstein’s home “under the guise” of modeling.
“There’s a reason why so many survivors were aspiring or working models,” Ziff said in an interview. “Hopefully people are starting to see that there’s a glamorous veneer and then there’s a very dark reality for many of us.”
The Post contacted a dozen models mentioned by Elkholy in his emails to Epstein, seeking to learn more about the potential meetings. Elkholy learned of the inquiries and wrote to top Post editors to complain of the outreach. When asked whether he would put a reporter in contact with models he represented, Elkholy declined, saying they would not want to participate in a story related to Epstein.
During discussions with The Post, Elkholy insisted that the public should not believe everything they read in the Epstein files.
In several email exchanges with Epstein in 2012, for instance, Elkholy discussed a Russian supermodel, then in her 20s. He claimed he had “poached” the star from a rival firm to his agency, i-Management, and told Epstein that the supermodel could come over to meet him. In daily schedules maintained by Epstein’s longtime assistant, the supermodel is listed for a tentative appointment and described as “Ramsey’s friend.”
The supermodel’s attorney told The Post his client had never met Elkholy or Epstein. When asked to explain, Elkholy acknowledged that he had fabricated the claims.
“There’s a lot of stuff that you shouldn’t take literally,” Elkholy said. “I was lying. Agents lie. All modeling agents will say what they need to say, for whatever reasons. … It’s almost like a used-car salesman.”
An introduction to Epstein
Elkholy was raised in New Jersey, wrestled in high school and then attended the University of Oregon.
He initially said he was 46 years old. Public records, including two traffic tickets in Oregon and a tax lien in New Jersey, show that he was born in 1968, making him 57.
When asked about the discrepancy, he said he would reveal his age only if The Post agreed not to publish it.
Elkholy said he had never planned to be an agent. Rather, he said, he “kind of stumbled into it” when he dated a model and took an interest in helping her friends navigate the business side of the industry.
“A lot of it is kind of networking and word of mouth,” he told The Post.
By the early 2000s, he said he began running i-Management, based in New York City and described on its former website as a scouting and management company providing personal attention so that models would not get “lost in the shuffle.”
Elkholy said he allowed models rent-free access to his Fifth Avenue apartment, which he shared with his girlfriend, as a place to rest between castings. Some stayed for weeks or even months. He taught others how to invest in the stock market to maximize their earnings, he said.
Over nearly two decades in the business, Elkholy estimated he represented at least 80 models. He said he made, on average, $250,000 to $300,000 a year through commissions.
Elkholy said a model friend introduced him to Epstein in Manhattan in 2006.
“She was like, ‘Hey, do you want to stop at my friend Jeffrey’s?’” he said, declining to name the model. “And we went over there.”
At the time, Elkholy was working on his doctoral thesis for the University of Manchester in England, focusing on a tribe in Indonesia that hunted pigs with spears. Epstein, he said, already seemed to know about the language spoken by the Orang Rimba when he met him.
“And it kind of blew my mind,” Elkholy recalled.
In hindsight, he said, he believes Epstein had researched his interests in the lead-up to their introduction to appear knowledgeable.
“I feel stupid,” he said.
The year 2008 would prove to be tumultuous for both men. Epstein pleaded guilty to two charges of soliciting prostitution, including one involving a minor who was 16, and began his 13-month stint in Palm Beach County Jail in Florida.
Epstein told Elkholy that his legal troubles stemmed from a girl who had lied about her age during a massage and “a group of parents trying to extort him.” Elkholy said he did not know that Epstein was a sex offender.
That summer, one of Elkholy’s top stars, Ruslana Korshunova, a 20-year-old model from Kazakhstan, died in what authorities ruled a suicide after she fell from the balcony of her Manhattan apartment building. Flight logs show that Korshunova had flown on Epstein’s private plane to Little Saint James in the U.S. Virgin Islands at age 18, about seven months before Elkholy signed a deal to represent her.
Elkholy said he only learned after Korshunova died that she and Epstein had once “dated”, adding he did not know how old she was when she met Epstein. He described Epstein as “distraught” following her death.
Elkholy said he did not facilitate their introduction. It had “nothing to do with me,” he said.
The two men talked about Korshunova in several emails after her death. In one note, they seemingly referenced her birthday.
“she would have been 23 yesterday,” Epstein wrote two years after she died.
“Yeah I know, still so very young….” Elkholy replied.
The same day, Elkholy emailed Epstein about an 18-year-old Russian college student he met at an Apple store.
“only about 5′8 but beautiful, thin and curvy,” he wrote, describing her as a summer worker at Six Flags who was looking for opportunities. “i think you will like her,” he wrote.
Elkholy told The Post that he does not remember her.
As his management firm grew, Elkholy checked in with Epstein as he traveled to scout models in destinations such as Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Latvia.
“Will be scouting in Russia in June/July, will def keep you in mind,” he wrote in 2010. When asked about the trip, Elkholy told The Post: “It never happened.”
‘Good for favors’
In one email, Elkholy explained to Epstein what was the core of their friendship: favors.
“The reason I never ask for anything in return for introducing you to models is because I consider it more of a favor and I know that you are also good for favors,” he wrote to Epstein a few months after he was released from jail.
Elkholy asked Epstein to use his influence to secure modeling deals, particularly with Wang, the fashion designer. Epstein had known Wang for decades and counted her as a “great friend,” according to an email within the trove of files.
“Jeffrey, can I ask you a rhinoseros favor?” Elkholy wrote to Epstein in 2010, describing a 26-year-old model. “Was wondering if you could arrange to have her see Vera Wang’s people to see if they could use her for showroom?”
Showroom modeling involves wearing clothing so that prospective buyers, including major department stores, can see how the attire looks off the runway.
“ill call vera,” Epstein replied.
A spokesperson for Wang declined to answer specific questions, including whether Wang had ever hired a model recommended by Epstein. The spokesperson, however, referred to a comment about Epstein that Wang gave to the Wall Street Journal in 2023: “I never knew he was using my name in any capacity, and it horrifies and repulses me to now hear that he did so.”
The two men also discussed telling women about potential work at Victoria’s Secret, referring to it as “VS.” In the 2000s, becoming a Victoria’s Secret Angel, the brand’s top runway models, could make a career.
“She asked me in the car about VS and wanted to know about your ‘intentions,’” Elkholy wrote to Epstein in 2010. “Of course I said all the right things, that you’re just being friendly, etc.”
Just over an hour later, Elkholy followed up: “if i have something for her, like a meeting w someone at VS, then she will believe that last nights meeting was legit.”
In another email, sent in 2011, Elkholy suggested ways to convince a model to show more of her body.
“She told me that she would do lingerie if you asked her … she is too shy to suggest it herself, but there are a million and one ways to get her in her panties, vera wang, vs, etc…,” Elkholy wrote to Epstein of one model. “it would mean a lot to me if you could break down goodie two shoe 
”
In his interview with The Post, Elkholy said two models he represented secured Victoria’s Secret deals after meeting Epstein. Elkholy declined to name the models.
When asked for a comment for this story, the spokesman for Wexner, the billionaire founder of the lingerie brand’s former parent company, referred a Post reporter to his testimony to the House Oversight Committee earlier this year. There, Wexner testified that he was duped by Epstein, saying he cut ties with the “con man” in 2007 after he misappropriated funds. Wexner said that he learned of one allegation that Epstein had falsely presented himself as a Victoria’s Secret talent scout, but Epstein denied it.
Wexner testified he never discussed Victoria’s Secret models with Epstein.
A spokesperson for Victoria’s Secret declined to answer specific questions from The Post but instead issued a statement pointing out that as of 2021, Wexner “is not employed by or affiliated with Victoria’s Secret in any capacity.”
Elkholy also sometimes suggested that Epstein take advantage of the introductions, emails show.
In a 2011 email to Epstein, he wrote: “I want her to give you a lingerie show, you have been way too patient w her! Let me work on this …”
“Jeffrey PLEASE just try her in bed,” he wrote in a separate email that year. Elkholy told The Post that the model, who was in her late 20s at the time, was with him when he wrote the email, which was intended to be sarcastic. The Post attempted to contact the model for comment, but she did not respond.
Epstein once asked Elkholy for the names of models who could join him and magician David Blaine for dinner in Paris in January 2014, emails show.
“Probably best to meet at your place first, so they see your home and know that David is your side-kick and not the other way round!” Elkholy wrote to Epstein. “David just needs to mention my name, to say that he knows me, so the girls don’t think I lied to them. He can say he knows me from NY.”
Emails show that Epstein postponed his trip because of illness, and there is no evidence that the dinner occurred.
A spokesperson for Blaine denied that he had arranged or attended any such dinner.
“The email you reference appears to reflect communications between two other individuals discussing the use of his name to facilitate meetings of which he had no knowledge and in which he had no involvement,” Blaine’s spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
‘It’s weird and creepy’
Over the decade they communicated, Elkholy sought Epstein’s advice on his personal life, asking him about everything from alternative cancer treatments for a family member to his thoughts on investing in a fashion magazine. For the latter, Epstein waved him off: “print is dead.”
Sometimes he asked for help related to women.
In one instance in 2015, Elkholy was courting a female Russian painter and asked if Epstein had any connections in the art world.
Epstein later followed up to ask: “waht ahppened with your artitst prey.”
In an exchange the following year, Elkholy described a romantic interest in Ukrainian model Anna Iaryn, then in her late 20s, and asked Epstein to help facilitate a connection.
“If you help me with this I will more than make it up to [you],” Elkholy wrote. “As a tentative suggestion I would be willing to take a scouting trip to [Europe] for you, or something along those lines. … Suffice to say that I would reciprocate with lots of time and energy.”
When asked about the proposed scouting trip, Elkholy told The Post that he did not work for Epstein and that he was telling him what he wanted to hear.
Reached by phone, Iaryn said she came to know Epstein after Svetlana Pozhidaeva, a former Russian model and his assistant, tried twice to recruit her to give him massages. Pozhidaeva recently told the Wall Street Journal that she is a victim of Epstein’s abuse and had since changed her name. She posted on her personal website that she is no longer accepting media requests.
Iaryn said she had separately met Elkholy a few times and had considered him to be a kind friend. She said she did not know he had a romantic interest in her, nor does she remember Epstein contacting her about him.
“It’s weird and creepy,” she said after reading their emails.
Correspondence between the two men slowed during the last few years of Epstein’s life. Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019 and died in federal custody. His death was ruled a suicide.
By then, Elkholy said he had left the modeling industry and transitioned to music as a guitarist, producer and founder of the band Monotronic.
Since the release of the Epstein files, he said, public outrage on Reddit and other social media over his emails has helped his band’s streaming numbers.
“For some reason I’m getting more fans,” he said. “Does that mean I’m going to go onstage and perform and risk getting shot? No, so it’s a mixed bag. So I just wish all this would go away.”
Andrew Neeser and Anuradha Uduwage contributed to this report by building an AI-based tool that allowed reporters to more effectively search the Epstein files. Aaron Schaffer and Ksenia Mironova contributed research.
The post This agent sent models to meet Jeffrey Epstein. Now he’s trying to explain why. appeared first on Washington Post.
