Aeltri

He learned English in London and French in Paris, where he first put his early passion for real estate into practice and entered the orbit of Jean-Luc Brunel, a powerful modeling agent in the 1980s.

“He was one of the boys hanging around Jean-Luc,” said Renée Toft Simonsen, a top model at the time, who considered Mr. Lombardo “part of the system” of young men who hang around models and connect them with powerful people.

Mr. Brunel, who surfaced in news reports several years ago for his connection to Jeffrey Epstein, a Florida billionaire convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor, declined to comment.