Onetime Miami Beach modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, right, with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell on Epstein’s private jet. The photo was introduced at Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial.
U.S. Department of Justice
During an explosive court hearing in the lawsuit accusing former Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo of using city resources to punish political opponents, an unexpected character with little connection to City Hall took center stage this week.
Jeffrey Epstein, the multimillionaire who was indicted on sex trafficking charges before his 2019 death, was the focus of the city’s deposition of Maritza Vasquez, a witness for plaintiffs Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla. The Little Havana businessmen have alleged that Carollo weaponized government resources against them in an effort to destroy their businesses because they supported Carollo’s opponent in the 2017 election.
Vasquez previously served on the city’s code enforcement board in what was a volunteer position. The plaintiffs included Vasquez on their witness list, saying she would testify that during her time on the board, Carollo instructed her and other board members “to give the maximum penalties to Plaintiffs” and that Carollo tried to push her off the board when she “started speaking out about the injustices of selectively treating Plaintiffs’ properties unfairly.”
But as the city pointed out shortly after starting Vasquez’s deposition, she was also the longtime bookkeeper for Jean-Luc Brunel, a close Epstein associate who ran a modeling agency with an office in Miami Beach. Epstein admired Donald Trump’s agency, T Models, and created his own with Brunel. That agency, called MC2 Model Management, allegedly doubled as a pipeline for trafficking victims. Brunel, who scouted and recruited girls — often from poor families — in countries such as Brazil, Ukraine and Russia, was with Epstein in Paris the day before Epstein was arrested in 2019.
Vasquez, who named Brunel godfather of her oldest son, previously told the Miami Herald as part of a 2019 investigation into MC2 that the agency housed girls who never really worked as models, but were instead transported to parties at Epstein’s Palm Beach and Manhattan mansions.
READ MORE: Did a Miami-based modeling agency fuel Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘machine of abuse’?
Vasquez was appointed to the city’s code enforcement board in October 2020, more than a year after Epstein’s death and at a time when her links to Epstein via Brunel were well documented. Brunel, accused by models of drugging and raping them, was arrested by French authorities two months later in December 2020. In 2022, Brunel was found dead in his French jail cell in what was ruled a suicide.
“Only in Miami,” Judge Federico Moreno said in court Monday as the parties argued about the relevance of Vasquez’s work for Brunel. Moreno has since recused himself from the case due to an unrelated conflict.
Harassing the witness?
While it was the plaintiffs’ decision to include Vasquez as a witness, the city seized on the opportunity to undermine her credibility and veer far off course from the lawsuit’s allegations.
Angel Cortiñas, outside counsel for the city, asked Vasquez about her work for a company that he said was “used by Jeffrey Epstein to traffic girls as young as 13.”
Jeffrey Gutchess, an attorney for Fuller and Pinilla, objected and instructed Vasquez not to answer further questions until the judge could rule on the objections.
Cortiñas pressed on anyway, and the deposition quickly devolved. Gutchess stood up and directed Cortiñas to continue only with questions related to the substance of the case. Cortiñas, however, continued with the same line of questioning. Vasquez responded that Epstein has nothing to do with the case and threatened to sue.
Vasquez tried to refocus her answers on the lawsuit’s allegations, referring to herself as being something of an activist in her area who was standing up for residents being “abused” by the city.
“And did Jeffrey Epstein abuse the little girls —“ Cortiñas began to ask as Gutchess quickly jumped in. The two attorneys raised their voices at each other, and Gutchess accused Cortiñas of harassing the witness.
In a statement after the hearing, Gutchess condemned the city’s line of questioning regarding Epstein.
Referring to the $63 million judgment Fuller and Pinilla won against Carollo in 2023, Gutchess said a jury “has already found that City officials used the machinery of government to retaliate against Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla for exercising their First Amendment rights, and the courts have repeatedly upheld that verdict.”
“No amount of witness harassment or sensational questioning will change those facts,” Gutchess continued. He also called Vasquez a “hero” for coming forward “to expose corruption within the City in this case. Any personal issues she may have faced are irrelevant to the matters before the court and are being used only as a distraction to attempt to smear Mr. Fuller.”
What happens next?
Following Moreno’s recusal, Judge Darrin P. Gayles has been assigned to the case. In a written order about his recusal, Moreno said the trial, which had been set for later this month, has now been “taken off the calendar.”
That throws the lawsuit, filed more than two years ago, into limbo. Gutchess had said in a filing in late February that a settlement agreement was “imminent” in the case, but the city denied that claim.
Cortiñas reiterated that position in court Monday, telling the judge “in no uncertain terms” that “there is no imminent settlement.”
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Tess Riski covers Miami City Hall. She joined the Miami Herald in 2022 and has covered local politics throughout Miami-Dade County. She is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School’s Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism.