"I Know 23 Is on the Old Side for You": The Email That Reveals How Epstein's Recruiters Operated

On October 22, 2009, Ramsey Elkholy sat down and wrote an email to Jeffrey Epstein that reads less like correspondence between friends and more like a wholesale catalog for human beings.

Elkholy, a New York model manager who appears in more than 2,900 documents in the DOJ-released Epstein files, described two women in terms that would make a livestock auctioneer blush. One was "5'11 and truly a genetic masterpiece." The other was "23, very hot blonde." Both were framed as offerings, complete with strategic advice on how to get them alone.

The email, recovered from Epstein's servers and preserved across multiple EFTA document sets (EFTA01820486, EFTA00771864), contains a single line that distills the entire Epstein operation into seven words:

"I know 23 is on the old side for you."

What the Email Says

Elkholy opened by discussing a 19-year-old woman he described as "young" and "a bit fiesty." He had arranged for a male acquaintance and his girlfriend to take her to dinner as a pretext. "If they are just hitting it off and the bf is there, she can ask for contact info and befriend her," he wrote, describing what amounts to a recruitment operation using a couple as cover.

He then turned to a second woman:

"She's 23 but oozes sex. If you're taste is anything like mine you will want to tear her clothes off the minute you see her. I was thinking maybe having a place for her to stay during her trips to NY would be a good angle since she won't have an apt anymore."

The suggestion was plain: offer housing as bait. The woman was losing her apartment in New York and could not afford to stay. Elkholy saw this vulnerability as "a good angle."

He continued with a third woman, proposing a fake modeling audition as the mechanism for introduction:

"We could set up a 'casting' of some sort. I know her the least of all the girls so maybe that would be the best way to play it."

The word "casting" appeared in quotation marks in the original email. Elkholy knew it was not a real casting. It was a pretext.

He closed with his assessment of both women. One was "blonde arm candy." The other was "a business-minded sex machine." He noted that one "will do anything to get ahead in her modeling career so don't let the bf discourage you."

The Seven Words

The most consequential sentence in the email is the one Elkholy likely considered a throwaway: "I know 23 is on the old side for you, but I think they're both worth meeting for different reasons."

At the time this was written, Epstein had already served 13 months in a Palm Beach County jail for soliciting prostitution from a minor. He was a registered sex offender. The victims in his Florida case were as young as 14.

Elkholy was not confused about Epstein's preferences. He was apologizing for them. The word "old" in this context was not about wrinkles or gray hair. It was about a 23-year-old being too mature for a man convicted of abusing children.

The Pattern

Elkholy's email is not an isolated document. It sits within a much larger body of correspondence that reveals how Epstein's supply chain functioned.

Daniel Siad, a Swedish modeling scout of Algerian origin, sent Epstein emails from Ibiza in July 2010 offering "Tigrane and five girls to Paris because they have there visa" and boasting that he was "with tigrane he would like to meet you he is here with me in Ibiza with 8 top girls." Siad appears in 2,293 documents in the released files and is now the subject of a rape complaint filed in Paris in February 2026 by former Swedish model Ebba Karlsson.

Jean-Luc Brunel, who ran Karin Models in Paris and co-founded MC2 Model Management with Epstein's money, appears in 7,687 documents. Emails in the files show that by 2014, models were rejecting MC2 contracts after finding "sex trafficking" articles about Brunel online. One agency partner wrote to Brunel that a model had "found some article in internet, which changed her position" about going to New York or Miami with him.

Elkholy occupied a specific niche in this ecosystem. He was not scouting in European nightclubs like Siad or running agencies like Brunel. He was a New York insider, someone who moved in social circles where young models were abundant and vulnerable. His email shows the calculus: identify a woman who needs something, offer it in exchange for access, package the introduction as something legitimate, and hand her over.

What Happened Next

Epstein's reply to Elkholy's email was brief. He asked where one of the women was going. Elkholy responded: "moving to moscow i think."

The names in the email are partially redacted in the released documents. It is not known whether the women described in the October 2009 email subsequently met Epstein or were harmed.

Elkholy has not been charged with any crime in connection with the Epstein case. He appears in the files primarily as a social connector and model industry figure. But the language of this email removes any ambiguity about what he understood his role to be. He was not introducing friends at a cocktail party. He was scouting targets, assessing their vulnerabilities, and pitching them to a convicted sex offender with full knowledge of what "old side" meant.

Source Documents

• EFTA01820486: Primary email from Ramsey Elkholy to Jeffrey Epstein, October 22, 2009
• EFTA00771864: Duplicate copy with additional reply chain
• EFTA00771860: Variant OCR of same email thread
• EFTA02438675: Additional copy in separate document set
• EFTA00885537: Further copy with partial OCR differences

Ramsey Elkholy's profile and 2,935 linked documents can be viewed at /persons/ramsey-elkholy.