What other modeling agencies have faced similar scandals with minors?

1. Elite Model Management and the Look of the Year: celebrity glamour and underage entrants

Elite Model Management’s Look of the Year contests drew teenagers globally and have been tied to stories of pressure on young entrants; reporting on judges and hosts such as Donald Trump and the agency’s founder John Casablancas shows how teens were placed in high‑stakes adult environments that later spawned allegations of exploitation within the agency’s orbit ^[1].

2. High‑profile agencies, alleged enabling of predators: Brunel, NEXT and systemic questions

Investigations into the industry’s power networks have linked agencies and investors to known predators: Variety reports that Jean‑Luc Brunel — an accused trafficker who later faced rape charges and died in custody — had been counted among investors and associates with firms connected to mainstream agencies, and that young teens like Esmeralda Seay‑Reynolds encountered unsafe casting and shoot conditions while represented by New York agencies ^[2].

3. Fake agencies used as grooming operations: Joseph Willard and copycat schemes

Law enforcement has repeatedly encountered individuals pretending to run international child‑modeling companies to lure and abuse children; Joseph Willard was convicted after posing as the owner of an international child modeling agency, traveling state to state to procure sexually explicit images and sometimes assaulting victims, according to prosecutors and trial testimony ^[3].

4. Digital grooming under the guise of modeling: the Joshua Glover case

Modern platforms have amplified the risk: Joshua Glover used Snapchat to pose as a modeling‑agency owner called “Mary J Studios,” contacting thousands of girls, and admitted to receiving material from more than 90 minors — a scheme that culminated in a federal sentence and seizure of hundreds of child sexual abuse files ^{[4] [6] [7]}.

5. International trafficking rings exploiting “model” narratives: the Cartagena recruitment

Outside the U.S., social‑media stars and recruiters have been arrested for running sex‑trafficking rings that advertised modeling opportunities; one Colombian influencer was accused of recruiting at least 250 minors to Cartagena over a year under the pretense of modeling work, illustrating how the promise of glamour can feed trafficking networks ^[5].

6. Historic networks of sham child‑model businesses and prosecutions

Longer‑running patterns exist: activists and watchdogs catalogued operators and studios in the U.S. with criminal records — naming outfits such as A Model Shop, Flower Studios and Virtual Model Studios among entities tied to arrests and convictions over sexually explicit material involving minors ^[8].

7. Consumer‑protection and industry context: scams, unpaid minors and regulatory gaps

Consumer advice and advocacy reporting show a broad spectrum from outright criminal scams to structural mistreatment: the FTC warns parents about modeling scams that ask for money or suggestive photos (a red flag), while industry coverage highlights that many modeling firms operate outside the regulatory frameworks that govern other talent industries, creating protections gaps for young models ^{[9] [2]}.

8. Competing narratives, vested interests and the limits of available reporting

Alternative perspectives include agency denials, contested memories from decades‑old cases, and industry lobbying against tighter regulation; outlets such as Variety recount both victim accounts and pushback from firms, while consumer guides emphasize parental vigilance — reporting rarely captures the full scale of hidden abuse or distinguishes coercion from negligent business practices, and available sources do not enable a complete national tally of every implicated agency ^{[2] [9]}.