The Timeline of Paolo Zampolli

Born in Milan into a family of generational wealth.

Paolo Zampolli is born in Milan, the only child of Giovanni Zampolli and Luisa Gregorini — both from elite Italian families. His is a gilded upbringing: winters skiing in St. Moritz, weekends at the family castle near Milan, summers in Ibiza. By his own account, it was on those summer holidays that he first met American modeling agent John Casablancas, founder of Elite Model Management and his earliest mentor.

RAI journalist Sacha Biazzo, who has been investigating Zampolli, tells COURIER’s Nina Burleigh what he learned of Paolo’s childhood. According to a maternal aunt, Paolo was a troubled, drug-using boy who ran with a rough crowd; she says he dropped out of school at 13 and never finished high school. By 14, Zampolli has said, he had found his passion: “going around on my scooter in Milano seeing all these gorgeous girls.”

His father dies; at 18, Paolo takes over the family company.

Giovanni Zampolli dies suddenly in a skiing accident in Switzerland. Eighteen-year-old Paolo takes over his father’s business. He increasingly models himself on John Casablancas — then making headlines for his affair with 16-year-old Stephanie Seymour. “I looked up to Casablancas,” Zampolli later told Vanity Fair. “He had every supermodel then — Cindy, Naomi, Frederique. I am 18 years old, I have Linda Evangelista alone with me in my car for 25 minutes!”

In a 2019 lawsuit, a woman identified as Jane Doe 3 alleges that as a 15-year old aspiring model, she was sent by John Casablancas to a “casting call” at an Upper East Side residence — expecting to meet with a photographer affiliated with Elite. The “photographer” turned out to be Jeffrey Epstein. According to the complaint, Epstein ordered her to undress and took photographs of her before sexually assaulting her. 

Trump hosts Elite’s Look of the Year at the Plaza.

Donald Trump hosts the Elite Look of the Year contest in New York. Most contestants are teenage girls; reporting by The Guardian later details how men in Casablancas’s orbit “used the contest to engage in sexual relationships with vulnerable young models.” Nine-year-old Ivanka Trump accompanies her father to the finale — Elite’s president Monique Pillard would later sign Ivanka at 15.

Casablancas first met both Seymour, at 14, and his future wife — 16-year-old Brazilian model Aline Wemelinger — while judging Look of the Year contests. One contestant, then 17, later recalled: “It was very clear that there were opportunities to go out and party with Donald.”

Zampolli runs Look of the Year in Ibiza — then moves to New York.

Zampolli organizes the 1994 Look of the Year contest for Elite in Ibiza; among the finalists is a fourteen-year-old Gisele Bündchen, whom he would later claim to have “discovered” — and the contest’s winner, Natalia Semanova, is also fourteen. Casablancas encourages him to move to New York full-time. He arrives, buys into Metropolitan Models as partner and co-owner, and soon meets Donald Trump. “We both like beautiful things,” Zampolli told the New York Times.

On a scouting trip for Metropolitan, Zampolli reportedly meets 26-year-old Slovenian model Melania Knauss in Milan and urges her to come to the United States, where he would be her agent. As Burleigh reported, Milan then “was teeming with young beautiful women from the former Soviet Union — often inexperienced and vulnerable to exploitation.”

Melania arrives in New York.

Melania Knauss lands in the U.S. on August 27, 1996. Zampolli’s agency, Metropolitan, pays for her flight and a car from the airport, covers her rent, lends her money, and pays for her pager. In October, Zampolli helps her obtain an H-1B visa. His longtime partner Amanda Ungaro (to be introduced in 1999) later tells COURIER that Zampolli often “circumvented the law, enabling the models to work and earn money illegally.”

That April, Ivanka Trump walks her first runway at 15 as an Elite model. The same month, Trump and Epstein are photographed together at a Victoria’s Secret Angels event at Club Duvet on West 21st Street.

Zampolli’s friend Michel Adam Lisowski founds FashionTV, on which Zampolli becomes a familiar face. (Epstein would try to buy FashionTV around 2010.) Amid a battle with his Metropolitan partners, Zampolli leaves to launch his own agency, ID Management. He celebrates his birthday at 22 avenue Foch in Paris — the building where Lisowski lived and Epstein later kept a residence. That September, Lisowski sexually assaults a Polish model there; convicted in 2000, he flees France before serving his sentence.

Zampolli’s party introduces Donald to Melania.

At a Fashion Week party Zampolli hosts at the Kit Kat Club, Trump — there with another woman — is so taken with Melania that he asks for her number on the spot. By the end of September the two are an item. Zampolli has long cast himself as the matchmaker; Ungaro tells COURIER it “was a business arrangement… an agreement from which both parties stood to benefit.” Melania and Zampolli deny her account.

On a trip to Brazil, Zampolli meets 15-year-old model Amanda Ungaro, who says he “began harassing [her]” to pursue a relationship; they become involved in 2002 when she comes to New York at 17. A rival agency sues Zampolli for poaching models, alleging he “sexually harassed and abused models” and used “a false Italian passport identifying him as a diplomat” — claims a judge strikes as irrelevant. Trump, meanwhile, founds Trump Model Management with Italian entrepreneur Tommaso Buti and launches his first presidential bid with Melania at his side.

The campaign portraits are shot by Patrick Demarchelier — a Zampolli intimate he called “a very good friend of mine” since the early 1990s. Years later, longtime Epstein assistant Sarah Kellen would accuse Demarchelier of sexually assaulting her while she worked for Epstein.

Zampolli makes headlines — and reportedly shocks even Casablancas — by installing camera equipment in one of ID’s model apartments and proposing to broadcast a live feed of the girls living there “on the Web.”

Zampolli sits for an expansive Vanity Fair profile by Nancy Jo Sales, holding court on supermodels, mentors, and the mythology he has built around himself.

At 17, Ungaro flies on Jeffrey Epstein’s jet from Paris to New York alongside Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Sarah Kellen, agent Jean-Luc Brunel, and other models who appeared to her to be underage. After arriving, she becomes romantically involved with Zampolli, who had begun pursuing her since their first meeting years prior.

Zampolli and Epstein bid together for Elite — and Trump comes calling.

Elite’s New York branch files for bankruptcy; Zampolli joins Epstein to bid for it at auction, but the pair are outbid. In a DOJ proffer, model Adriana Mucinska tells the FBI that Zampolli introduced her to Epstein after Epstein saw a topless photo of her at ID. With his modeling fortunes faltering, Zampolli calls Trump about a standing job offer and hears the “magic words: You’re hired!”

As the Trump Organization’s Director of International Development, Zampolli sells condos at Trump Park Avenue and hunts international buyers for projects like the Villa Trump outside São Paulo — wearing gold “Trump” cufflinks gifted by Donald. That May, Ungaro appears on ID Models’ roster of represented women, alongside Adriana Mucinska.

Zampolli leaves the Trump Organization to found a “boutique” real-estate shop, the Paramount Group, which — per coverage at the time — transplanted “exceptionally long-limbed women from the catwalk to the streets” as model/real-estate brokers.

From September 2007 to November 2008, Zampolli serves as director and “Special Advisor on Climate Change Issues” for a UN-adjacent IGO, the Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Organization (I.R.E.O.).

With Ivanka Trump, Zampolli co-hosts the United Nations Diamond Awards Gala for Renewable Energy and the Friends of Climate Change.

Zampolli pivots toward entrepreneurship, “environmental activism,” and UN diplomacy. His 40th-birthday party at Provocateur is filmed by FashionTV; among the well-wishers is Epstein associate Irina Chernova, whom emails suggest introduced dozens of young women to Epstein. His son Giovanni is born that spring. Haute Living launches a column, “Zampolli’s World,” chronicling his social calendar — its debut photo featuring Epstein associates Henry Jarecki and Natalie Malyshev.

Emails published by journalist Bekah Day show Zampolli corresponding with Ghislaine Maxwell and registering as a “citizen” of her TerraMar Project. He calls it “intriguing,” offers to be its “UN permanent representative,” and tells Maxwell he “know[s] a good company where you can get real passports done.”

Zampolli throws a birthday party attended by UN diplomats, including Russia’s ambassador Vitaly Churkin. DOJ files later show Churkin and Epstein met regularly in 2015–16, discussing “financial solutions” for the Russian Federation. When Churkin died in 2017, Epstein emailed Peter Thiel: “life is short, start with dessert.”

Donald Trump is elected president on November 8. Zampolli and Ungaro ring in the new year at Mar-a-Lago beside the Trumps — whom Zampolli already calls “President” and “First Lady.”

Zampolli attends Trump’s inauguration and co-hosts a party with the Forbes family, documented by FashionTV— which interviews guests including Melania’s attorney Michael Wilds, who says Trump showed “very fine taste in who he chose to marry.” Ungaro later tells RAI and COURIER she endured years of domestic violence. She dates the last assault to late 2017 or early 2018.

Ungaro leaves Zampolli and sues for child support; despite years of presenting her as his “wife,” Zampolli now denies any marriage. The couple reunites that October.

Trump names Zampolli to the Kennedy Center board of trustees — a seat he keeps through the Biden years and into the second Trump term, pushing “upgrades” from a marina to country-sponsored lounges. Ahead of the election he relocates to a 14,000-square-foot, $17 million townhouse in Georgetown.

Paolo Zampolli and Amanda Ungaro end their relationship for good.

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A 23-year-old woman, Victoria Clarke, reports to the NYPD that Zampolli drugged and raped her after luring her to his townhouse following a UN party. She has said police told her they could not pursue charges because Zampolli had “diplomatic immunity.”

Zampolli’s Instagram suggests a year of constant travel — Cipriani locations around the world, where he is photographed at tables of beautiful young women.

An inauguration party, then two envoyships.

Zampolli co-hosts the Blockchain Ball inauguration party at the Kennedy Center with Tether co-founder Brock Pierce — himself a longtime Epstein associate. Weeks later, Trump names Zampolli special envoy to Italy, a post with no State Department oversight; he is soon “bouncing around Italy… proclaiming his new title” and meeting Matteo Salvini. By March he is U.S. Special Representative for Global Partnerships, attending the World Bank and IMF and touring Gulf and Central Asian capitals. In June, after Ungaro is arrested in Florida, Zampolli reportedly asks a top ICE official to detain her to help win custody of their son.

Davos, Budapest, and an offer to testify.

A private message published by O Globo shows Zampolli suggesting he’d use his influence with AG Pam Bondi and SDNY’s Jay Clayton to win back custody. He hauls a bull sculpture to Davos to leave a “Trumpian mark” on the U.S. delegation, and stands beside JD Vance in Budapest. After Melania Trump abruptly declares “the lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today,” Zampolli tells the Daily Mail he is ready to testify under oath about how the Trumps met. In May he brags to Andrew Tate about selling Boeing jets to Uzbekistan: “$20 billion in 20 minutes.”

Shortly after Bekah Day — a content creator with nearly one and a half million followers on TikTok and over 10K subscribers on Substack — published a story about Zampolli’s connections with convicted Epstein accomplice Ghislain Maxwell and reveals his black market wealth accumulation, her account is banned. Zampolli turned to Instagram to celebrate.

This was not Day’s first major scoop. She has been a leading voice investigating Epstein’s criminal enterprise and uncovering the connections tying Trump to Epstein through their mutual friend and former modeling agent Paolo Zampolli.

Beyond Zampolli’s Instagram post, there is no evidence demonstrating the Trump Administration’s special envoy bears responsibility for the TikTok ban. It is worth noting, though, that Larry Ellison — the USA owner of TikTok is a friend of the Administration.

Just days before Andrew and Tristan Tate were arrested on new rape and sex trafficking charges, they were reportedly partying with Zampolli. The Daily Mail shared that Zampolli hosted the Tates at his D.C. home before bringing them as his guests to a social club known for entertaining Trump Cabinet officials.