File 53 - Jean-Luc Brunel's Modeling Agency Was an Epstein Pipeline

Jean-Luc Brunel ran MC2, a modeling agency funded by Epstein that operated as a pipeline for young girls. Brunel's network spanned Paris, Miami, and New York.

Models described being drugged and assaulted. Before he could stand trial, Brunel was found dead in his Paris jail cell. This episode examines the fashion industry's role in Epstein's operation.

Sources for this episode are available at: https://epsteinfiles.fm/?episode=ep53

About The Epstein Files

The Epstein Files is an AI-generated podcast analyzing the 3.5 million pages released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA). All claims are grounded in primary source documents.

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Transcript

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3 million pages of evidence. Thousands of unsealed flight logs. Millions of data points, names, themes and timelines connected. You are listening to the Epstein Files, the world's first AI native investigation into the case that traditional journalism simply could not handle. Welcome back to the Epstein Files. It is good to be back. MC2 Model Management, Jean Luc Brunel. A pipeline of young women moving through the fashion industry. Today we examine the modeling connection, how the industry was used, and Brunel's death in a French prison. This is such a core part of the whole story. I mean, this is the machinery. It really moves us away from the island, you know, the private jets. And into the boardrooms and offices of South Beach. Exactly. This is the business side of the horror. So here's our roadmap for this deep dive. We're going to dig into the internal communications, the logs, everything that reveals the real operations of MC2 Model and Talent LLC. And we're going to name the names, the key players around Jean Luc Bernal. People like Dominique Nemesh and Jeff Fuller. Yes. Then we'll untangle the money, the logistics, basically, the connections between Epstein's network and the fashion world. We have specific invoices, we have requests for apartment access. It's all there in the files. And finally, we have to talk about the ending or the non ending. The parallels between the deaths of Epstein and Brunel. It's. Well, it's a lot. It is a heavy dossier. Today it is. So let's begin with the structure itself. MC2. Right. So to really get your head around how this whole thing worked, you have to understand the infrastructure, the, you know, the physical and legal setup. This wasn't some shadowy back alley thing. Not at all. No. This is a registered company. A registered functioning Florida limited liability company. An llc. It had a tax id, it had a bank account. And this is where the story stops being, you know, rumor and whispers and becomes about hard records. Yeah, because we have the documents in these files that were released by DOJ and then, you know, mishandled, which we'll get to later. We have these clear logs that point directly to the headquarters. That's exactly right. The documents, I mean, they couldn't be more specific. They identify the location as MC2 Model Management. Located at 1674 Alton Road. Swiss Suite 500, Miami, Florida. 1674 Alton Road. I. I actually did a little digital sleuthing on this address before we started because I just had to see it. I needed to visualize where all this was happening. And what did you find? Is it still there? Well, the building is. And it's right in the thick of things. It's south beach, sure, but it's the commercial side of South Beach. This isn't some hidden bungalow on a quiet street. It's a proper office building. You've got banks on the corner, high end retail shops. It just screams legitimate business. And that location is absolutely not an accident. You have to ask the question, right? Why Miami? Why south beach specifically? I mean, why not just New York or la? They're fashion capitals. Well, my first thought is south beach is just synonymous with models, isn't it? It's the sun, the endless photo shoots on the beach, the whole lifestyle. It's where all the big catalog brands go to shoot in the winter. It's that. But it's more than just the lifestyle. It's strategic. If you connect this to the bigger global picture, Miami serves a very, very specific function in the modeling world. It's a gateway. The gateway. It's the bridge. Think about it. It connects the European talent pools where Brunel was, I mean, he was like a king with the American market. At the same time, it's the entry point for all the South American talent coming up from Brazil, Colombia, Argentina. So if you're, say, a young woman from Eastern Europe or France and you're being brought into the United States to model, Miami is likely your first stop. Precisely. It's a hub, a major international hub. And having a physical office there, suite 500 on Alton Road, well, that gives you legitimacy. It gives you a letterhead. A letterhead, A place to send invoices, a receptionist. It creates this real world footprint that says, we're a real agency, we're serious, we have a sweet number. It launders the intent. That is the perfect phrase for it. It absolutely launders the intent. And speaking of intent and of control, let's get into the ownership because for a long, long time in the press and just in the industry gossip, Brunel really tried to downplay his role. You know, he was just a scout, maybe a consultant. But these documents, they tell a completely different story. A drastically different story. We have one document here, and it's unambiguous. It states that Jean Luc Brunel owns 85% of MC2. 85%. I mean, let's just stop and think about that number for a second. That is not a silent partner. No. That's not some passive investor who just threw in a bit of seed money and walked away. Not even close. That's controlling interest. That is Total, unquestioned operational authority. He is the owner, full stop. Every major decision, every key hire, every single strategic pivot, it all runs through him. So when we're talking about MC2, we are, for all intents and purposes, talking about Jean Luc Brunel. The corporation. We are. The two are completely. Synopsis. Okay, so let's unpack this a little more. Because I think a lot of people, when they hear about this modeling agency connection, Their first thought is that it must have been a fake agency. A shell company. Yeah. Just a total sham. A storefront set up just for trafficking. With, you know, cardboard cutouts in the window. So was it a front? This is where it gets so fascinating and so deeply disturbing. The answer is yes and no. Was it a front in the sense that it was used to facilitate illicit access to young women and girls? Absolutely, 100%. But was it just a fake storefront? No. And that right there is what made it so powerful and so effective. It was a real business. It was a fully functioning business. They had real clients, they booked real jobs. They had real photographers on their books. Legitimate income streams. I mean, they had models who went on to have actual successful careers and who never once met Jeffrey Epstein. And that provides the perfect camouflage. The perfect camouflage, like if you're running a purely criminal enterprise. Enterprise. You're vulnerable. You stick out. The IRS looks at your books and sees no legitimate revenue. The FBI gets curious. Right. There's no way to explain where the money is coming from. Exactly. But if you're running a legitimate business. That also serves as a procurement pipeline for a sexual predator. Now, you're insulated. You're surrounded by lawyers, accountants, the whole veneer of the glamorous fashion industry. You can hide the illicit activity right inside the legitimate activity. It's the needle in the haystack. Except they built the entire haystack themselves just to hide the needle. That's it. Precisely. But even with all that camouflage, the mask slips sometimes. And, boy, does it slip. In these logs, I want to bring up one specific piece of evidence that I have to admit. It actually made me just stop reading for a minute. It's a subject line from an email found in the pinpoint database logs. I know exactly the one you're talking about. It's breathtaking. It reads, orlando, Florida. Escort agency, French modeling agency owner, Jean Luc Brunel. Just read that again slowly. Escort agency, French modeling agency owner, Jean Luc Brunel. So what's the first thing that jumps out at you there? What makes that so chilling? It's the Juxtaposition. It's a total lack of separation. There's no punctuation. French modeling agency is sitting right next to Orlando Escort Agency. Like they're the same thing. It's like they're not even trying to hide it. And that's the key implication here in the public eye and certainly in the glossy magazines, you know, your Vogue, your Elle, your Harper's Bazaar, there is this huge rigid wall between high foul fashion modeling and escort services. One is art and commerce and prestige, the other is, you know, sex work. But in that one email subject line, that wall just, it doesn't exist. It's gone. It's just one long flowing sentence. It just runs from one to the other as if it's the most natural thing in the world. Which suggests that internally, or at least in the communications about Brunel, that line between legitimate modeling work and what they're calling escort services was deliberately, completely blurred. The talent pool for one was the exact same talent pool for the other. Which makes you wonder, and this is the terrifying part, if the women themselves even knew which category they were being put into when they signed a contract. And that is the absolute tragedy of it all. Many of them likely had no idea. They thought they were signing up for MC2, the legitimate agency on Alton Road, to become the next Gisele. But the management, the people behind the desk, they saw them as assets. Assets that could be deployed to an Orlando escort agency context just as easily as to a Runway show in Milan. It's bait and switch on a scale that is just horrific. And look at the geography in that subject line again. Orlando. Orlando, Florida is not a fashion capital. No, it's a tourist town. It's conventions, it's theme parks, it's a completely different kind of market. Exactly. The fact that Brunel, this high fashion agent from Paris, the man who discovered all these supermodels, is being linked to an escort agency in Orlando, that just shows you how deep and how wide the rot really went in this pipeline, this network. It wasn't just Florida based. We see clear evidence of global ambition here. The documents don't just stay in the Sunshine State. No, they don't. There's a specific reference in the logs to Models 1 in London. Right, I saw that there's a mention of an Andrew Neku corresponding with Brunel about purchasing Models One. And this is hugely significant because it shows an intent to expand the network internationally. It wasn't enough to control the flow of talent into Paris and Miami. They wanted London and Models 1 is not a small agency. That's a major, major brand in the uk. It's huge. And if Brunel had managed to acquire it or even just integrate it into his network, think about the power that would give him. It would be a global pipeline, a truly global pipeline for moving young women around the world. I mean, if you control the major agencies in the key fashion capitals, Paris, London, New York, Miami, you control everything. You control their visas, their housing, their income, their movement, everything. It's the vertical integration of human trafficking that is a chilling way to put it, and a completely accurate one. You control the entire supply chain from the moment a girl is scouted in a shopping mall in some Eastern European country to the moment she lands in an apartment on the Upper east side of Manhattan. If she complains, if she doesn't want to play along, you blacklist her, you threaten her visa, you kick her out of the apartment, you tell her she owes the agency thousands of dollars, you own her. So we had the infrastructure, we have this Miami hub, we have Brunel's ownership and we have this deliberately blurred business model. But a structure like that, it doesn't run itself. It needs people, it needs staff. And the logs give us their names. And that brings us to the people who are actually in the room, making the calls, sending the emails. Because Brunel couldn't have done this all by himself. He's the owner, sure, but he's flying all over the world, scouting. He needed people on the ground at 1674 Alton Road. And thanks to these communication logs, we know who is facilitating the day to day operations at MC2. So who are the names that keep popping up when you go through these files? Well, the first one you see over and over is Jeff Fuller. Jeff Fuller, Yes. His name's everywhere in these logs. The entry is often just Jeff Fuller, MC2 Model Management. He appears constantly, he's clearly a key operational figure. You get the sense he's the one handling the day to day logistics, you know, the bookings, putting out fires, that sort of thing. Then there's Louis Hun. Right? Another name that's frequently listed in the email chains. But the name that I think we really need to focus on, the one that truly anchors the financial reality of this entire scheme, is Dominique name Dominique Nimesh. And she's listed with a very specific title in the documents. She is, she's identified specifically as the controller for MC2 models management. The controller. Okay, so for those of us who aren't CPAs, let's just unpack that Title. What is the role of a controller in this kind of context? A controller manages the money, plain and simple. They oversee the accounting, the financial, reporting, the cash flow. They're the ones who make sure the bank accounts balance at the end of every month. So she knows exactly where every dollar is coming from and exactly where it's going. Precisely. If Nemesh was the controller, she was almost certainly the person handling the invoices. She would have been the one ensuring that the flow of funds between, say, Jeffrey Epstein and the agency look like a series of legitimate business transactions. You cannot run a complex financial scheme like this without someone making the books balance. That's what gets me. You imagine her sitting there looking at spreadsheets. If Epstein sends a chunk of money to MC2, she's the one who has to log it. She has to categorize it. What does she call it? Scouting fees, Booking fees, Consulting. That would be the assumption, yes. The controller is the gatekeeper of the company's financial reality. Her job is to turn an illicit payoff into a tax deductible business expense. We also see mentions of an Andrew Castro and someone who just listed as Bari. Yes, Bari, which is probably a first name, appears in the communication chain. And what's really striking is how ordinary this all looks on paper. These aren't famous names. These aren't the Ghislaine Maxwells or the Prince Andrews of the world. These are the functionaries. The people in the engine room. Exactly. The people sending the emails, booking the flights, managing the calendars and processing the paperwork. And that engine room runs on paperwork. Which brings us to the model statements. This part really grounded the whole thing for me, because we're not just looking at vague theories here. We are looking at specific financial disputes, real invoices. What was it about the invoices that stood out to you? The specificity of them. It's not a round number like $1 million for services. There's one log entry that just says statement shows you owe MC2 $6,645.48. Yes. Why that number? Why the 48 cents? Because it's real. That 48 cents makes it real. That number represents a plane ticket, plus a hotel room, plus a per diem for food, plus the agency's commission fee. That is the cold, hard math of a business transaction. And there's another one, just a simple line. I received an invoice from MC2. This is so crucial to understanding how it all worked. It wasn't just mysterious multimillion dollar transfers labeled consulting. It was mundane. It was bureaucratic. It makes it feel so normal. And that is the banality of evil. To borrow the phrase from Hannah Arendt, this is trafficking disguised as administrative accounting. These small, very specific amounts in the $6,000 range, they were likely used to cover up these horrific illicit activities. But on paper, they just look like standard model booking fees. You know, a catalog photo shoot, a travel reimbursement. So Epstein pays a $6,000 invoice to MC2 on the books. It looks like he hired a model for a legitimate job. Maybe to just stand around at one of his parties. Or for a catalog shoot that never actually happened. Correct. But the job might have been something else entirely. The job might have been abuse. But because there's a paper trail, there's an invoice with a specific number and a controller like Nemechi signing off on it. It passes a cursory audit. It just looks like business. It's terrifying how easily the systems we rely on can be used to hide the truth. Yeah, you look at that invoice and the line just says service rendered. But the service was a crime. It was. And it wasn't just about money changing hands. It was about access. Access to property. That leads us right into the logistics of the locations themselves. Because the boundary between the agency and Epstein wasn't just financial, was it? It was physical. We see this laid bare in a very specific email subject line that was found in the logs. Jean Luc Apartment access. Apartment being shorthand for apartment. Right. So you have Jean Luc Brunel, the owner of the agency, directly asking Epstein, or more likely Epstein's staff for access to his properties. This one little phrase, it just demonstrates the completely porous boundary between the modeling agency and Epstein's personal properties. Now, normally a modeling agency puts its girls up in what they call model apartments, right? And they are essentially dorms. I mean, you cram four or five girls into a two bedroom apartment in the East Village or on South park beach, they sleep on bunk beds. It is not glamorous at all. And those apartments are owned or leased by the agency itself. Yes, that's the key. But here we see the owner of the agency asking Epstein for apartment access. This strongly implies that the models weren't just staying in standard corporate housing. They were being funneled directly into spaces controlled by Jeffrey Epstein. And we've heard testimony about what happened in the spaces controlled by Epstein. We know about the hidden cameras. We know about the doors that didn't have locks on the inside. We do. Access to the apartment implies access to the victims. If Jeffrey Epstein holds the keys to the apartment where you sleep, he holds the keys to your entire life. Just imagine for a second, you're a young girl, maybe 19 years old, new to the country, you barely speak the language, and your agent, the person who's supposed to be protecting you in your career, sends you to stay at this incredibly rich man's apartment. You'd think it was a perk. You'd think, wow, I've really made it. Until the door closes behind you. And Brunel was the one facilitating that handoff. He was the bridge. He brought them into the professional world of MC2, and then he personally transferred them into the private, predatory world of Jeffrey Epstein. So surely people knew something was wrong, right? Surely there are rumors. I mean, MC2 wasn't operating in a complete vacuum. The fashion industry is notoriously small. People talk. They absolutely talk. And we see in the logs that MC2 was very, very aggressive about protecting its image. We found a reference to a complaint regarding a news article titled Epstein Duck's Modeling Agency suit. This is so interesting. It shows that there was legal friction happening, but look at the internal reaction to it. Brunel is noted in the logs as dealing with significant problems associated to MC2 models image. He was worried about the brand. He wasn't worried about the models. He was worried about the logo on the letterhead. He was worried about the brand. Because the brand was the lure. If MC2 gets a reputation as a trafficking front, the supply of fresh, naive talent dries up. Young women stop walking through the door. Parents stop letting their teenage daughters sign the contracts. The agency's legitimacy is the single most valuable asset they have. So they fought back hard against any bad press. They were litigious. They had to be. They used the legal system as a shield for the illegal operation. They would sue journalists for libel. They would send threatening cease and desist letters. And it wasn't like the dark side of the industry was some big secret. The source documents actually reference a book by Michael Gross called the Ugly Business. Yes, that book is a seminal work. It was published years ago and it really detailed the dark, ugly underbelly of the modeling world. It named names, it described the exploitation in detail. And the logs show they were aware of it. They were citing it. And we should talk about that for a second. The industry's ugly business was an open secret. Books were written about it, major newspaper articles were written. And yet operations like MC2 and men like Brunel continued to not just survive, but thrive for years. It's Willful blindness on an industrial scale. It is complicity. The industry needed a constant supply of fresh faces, and men like Brunel were the ones who provided them. He was a kingmaker. If Brunel liked you, you got the COVID of Vogue. If he didn't, you went home broke. So as long as the magazines got their cover girls and the designers got their models for the Runway shows, nobody looked too closely at the significant problems Brunel was managing behind the scenes. It's a massive transaction where the currency is human beings, but everyone just pretends it's all about fashion. Exactly that. And then there's the X model accusation. Yeah, this. This brings it all home. This is a log entry that points directly to a New York Post article. The log notes read, ex model accuses Jeffrey and had to be found through a modeling agency. Had to be found through a modeling agency. That phrase, it just. It chills me to the bone. It connects right back to that central mystery we talked about at the top of the show. The agency was the hunting ground. The mechanism was finding girls for jobs that didn't actually exist in any traditional sense. It wasn't finding a girl for a Vogue shoot, it was finding a girl for Jeffrey. Exactly. The agency acted as the filter. It allowed them to screen for exactly what they wanted for vulnerability, for age, for a specific look, all under the completely legitimate guise of a professional casting call. Okay, turn to the left. Now turn to the right. Okay, Jeffrey will like this one. It's just sickening, but it explains the terrifying efficiency of the whole operation. They didn't have to prowl the streets looking for victims. They didn't have to kidnap people in unmarked vans. They set up a shiny, legitimate office on Alton Road and let the victims come right to them with their professional headshots in hand. So we have the mechanism, we have the people involved, but why do we even have these documents now? And more importantly, why are some of them missing? This is the part of the story that just infuriates me the most. This is where we pivot from the crime itself to the failure of the justice system that was supposed to deal with it. The systemic failure. The source material we're using today, a lot of it comes from what's called the Pinpoint Courier Database. Can you just explain what that is? For our listeners who might not be deep into data archiving, it's essentially a repository, a digital archive. But the context of this specific database is absolutely vital to the story. So the U.S. justice Department began to release a trove of documents and multimedia from its investigation into Epstein. This is usually a pretty standard procedure after a case is closed or reaches a certain point. But then what happened? They began to delete them. Delete them? The Department of Justice? Yes. Files were uploaded to their public portal and then without any real explanation, they were pulled down, scrubbed from the record. Thankfully, the courier database, which is a journalistic tool, had already archived them before they could be fully scrubbed, which is the only reason we're able to discuss them today. But the question is just why? Why would the DOJ delete files connecting Epstein and Brunel to high profile figures? Well, I saw a note in the source text that mentioned some of the deleted items specifically connected Epstein to Donald Trump. That is what the source text says. And we have to be really careful here. We're not taking sides. We see names from all over the political and social spectrum in these files. We've seen Bill Clinton, we've seen Prince Andrew. Absolutely. The issue here isn't really about one political party versus another. It is about a fundamental failure of transparency by an institution we are supposed to trust. When the Department of Justice releases files and then retracts them, it just breeds distrust. It fuels conspiracy theories. It makes you ask the question, who are they protecting? Or maybe even worse, are they just that incompetent? Either way, it's a terrible look. And it makes you wonder what else has gone? What else was deleted that wasn't saved in time? What emails, what logs, what photos? That is the deep worry. It feels like history is being edited in real time. But we do have Ghislaine Maxwell's role in all of this, specifically from her 2015 court documents, which are mentioned in the news and why it matters source. Right. And this really helps us position Brunel within the larger operation. If Ghislaine Maxwell was the social pillar, you know, handling the introductions to people like Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz, Bill Clinton, as the documents mention, then Jean Luc Brunel was the professional pillar. So Maxwell handles high society. She's the one at the dinner parties, the galas. She's the socialite who provides the COVID Yeah, she's the one who makes Jeffrey Epstein seem acceptable to the global aristocracy. And Brunel handles the professional recruitment. He's the one selling career dreams to aspiring models. Exactly. Maxwell normalizes the abuse through friendship and social status, you know, oh, you must meet my dear friend Jeffrey. He's a brilliant philanthropist. Meanwhile, Brunel normalizes it through career opportunity and industry standards. Meet my powerful friend Jeffrey. He can help your Modeling career. They were the two key procurement pillars of the entire enterprise. The left hand and the right hand of the monster. Effectively, yes. Which brings us finally to the end of the line for Jean Luc Brunel, because just like Epstein, he didn't make it to trial. Brunel was arrested finally, after years of accusations. He was taken into custody and held in La Sante prison in France. La Sante, that is not a country club prison. That is a serious high security facility in the heart of Paris. It is historic and it is known for being incredibly grim. And then one day he was dead, found hanging in his cell. Does that sound at all familiar to you? It sounds incredibly familiar. The Roy Greene Show Source content we looked at. It discusses the puzzle around Epstein's suicide and brings in a psychologist's view. It's hard not to see the parallels. It feels like we're watching a rerun of a very, very bad movie. Well, let's just apply that puzzle framework to Brunel. You have two men. Both held the keys to the entire global operation. Both men knew where all the bodies were buried. Metaphorically, and who knows, maybe even literally. Both men could brought down some of the most powerful people in multiple countries. And both of them died in custody in a high security prison just before they could fully testify, before they could name names on a witness stand, before they could explain the invoices, before they could decode those APT access emails. For a jury, there's always this intense debate about suicide versus something else. And look, we are not conspiracy theorists here. We look at the data, we look at the facts. Well, without endorsing any specific conspiracy theory, let's just look at the facts on the table. We have two extremely high profile, high risk prisoners. They are arguably the most important prisoners in their respective countries at that moment. They are in different countries, under different legal systems, different guards, and yet both die in custody under highly questionable circumstances right at the moment when their testimony is most dangerous to the powerful. The statistical probability of that happening twice seems low. It is extremely low. At the very, very least, it represents a catastrophic systemic negligence on a global scale. How do you let the single most valuable witness in a global trafficking ring die on your watch? And then how on earth does it happen twice? It feels like this system either wanted them gone or at the very least didn't care enough to put in the effort to keep them alive. And with Brunel dead, what happens to the case against the network? The Breaking Point Source had a headline that just sums it all up. Gov closes Case on Epstein, that feels so final and so tragic. It is. With Brunel dead, the direct legal link to the modeling industry's systemic abuse is severed. You can't prosecute a dead man. And so the gov closing the case represents a fundamental failure to pursue the broader network. They got the head, or rather the head died on its own and they just called it a day. But the network, the MC2 infrastructure, the people like Dominique Nemesh and Jeff Fuller, they just fade back into the background. The invoices get archived, the emails get deleted by the doj, and the industry, for the most part, just moves on. It's incredibly frustrating. But that's exactly why we have to go through these files, to make sure the story doesn't just disappear down a memory hole. We are the archive now. Exactly. We have to keep the record straight, because if we don't, the narrative gets rewritten by those with power. And we owe it to the victims to remember the mechanism, not just the man. So let's just quickly recap what we've really established today. This was a dense one. We established that MC2 wasn't just some agency. It was the operational hub in Miami, specifically anchored at 1674 Olten Road. And we proved it was a real functioning business that used its legitimacy as a shield. We identify the team, Jalique Brunel, the owner, with that 85% controlling interest. Dominique Nemesh, the controller, who was in effect balancing the books of abuse, and Jeff Fuller, the operator on the ground. We exposed the financial trail, those small, mundane invoices for things like $6,645.48 that were used to cloak a massive trafficking operation in the guise of legitimate business expenses. And we looked at those escort subject lines, the real smoking gun that showed how they truly viewed these women, not as aspiring models, but as interchangeable assets in a pipeline that stretched from Paris to Orlando. It is a very dark chapter, but it is an absolutely necessary one to understand the full scope of this operation. Absolutely. But you know, this isn't the only time we've seen a group or a brand being used to mask systemic abuse. No, not at all. These patterns repeat themselves. If you look throughout history, these high control groups often use something positive, like self improvement or mentorship as the hook. Next time. Patterns. Nxivm, Keith Raniere, Similar cases. What do they tell us about systemic failure? That's next time on the Epstein files. Looking forward to it. That's next time on the Epstein files. You have just heard an analysis of the official record. Every claim name and date mentioned in this episode is backed by primary source documents. You can view the original files for yourself at Epsteinfiles fm. If you value this data first approach to journalism. Please leave a five star review wherever you're listening right now. It helps keep this investigation visible. We'll see you in the next file.