Former top ultra-luxury real estate broker brothers Oren and Tal Alexander, along with a third sibling, are relentless sexual predators who together raped dozens of women and girls and then “celebrated their crimes,” a federal prosecutor told jurors on Tuesday.
Over more than a decade, Tal, Oren, and Oren’s twin, Alon Alexander, “used whatever means necessary” — including drugging victims and using “brute force” — to carry out the attacks, Assistant US Attorney Madison Reddick Smyser said in her opening statement at the brothers’ Manhattan sex-trafficking trial.
The Alexander brothers face a dozen felony counts, including conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion, and the sexual exploitation of a minor. They have vehemently denied the sex crimes charges against them, as well as all other allegations.
If convicted at trial, Tal Alexander, 39, and the twins, 38, could face up to life behind bars. It would mark a dramatic fall for the real estate agent brothers who built their careers on high-end luxury deals with notable clients, including Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, financier Leon Black, and Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.
Prosecutors have alleged in an indictment that the Alexanders sometimes planned out sexual assaults, using their wealth to entice victims with the promises of luxury experiences, travel, and accommodations. At other times, they chose their victims at random, prosecutors said.
The Alexanders, Smyser told the six-man, six-woman jury on Tuesday, used “power, wealth, and access to lure women and girls to them” at swanky locales like the Hamptons, Miami, and Manhattan.
The brothers “carried out their rapes in different ways,” said Smyser. “They physically held victims down” and put drugs like GHB and Xanax in their drinks, getting the women so intoxicated that, in one instance, their victim could not stand up, she said.
The prosecutor said the jury will hear from several accusers and be shown what she said is corroborating evidence from texts, emails, videos, and photos.
“You’ll hear from a woman who Tal held down, while Alon and two others raped that woman,” said Smyser said, adding that the woman was 16 years old at the time.
“You will also learn that the defendants celebrated their crimes,” said the prosecutor. “For example, after Oren and Alon sexually assaulted three high school girls in a hotel room, Oren texted a friend that he took down a 17-year-old.”
The brothers told each other in text messages that “the only thing that could bring them down is if some ‘hoe’ complained,” Smyser told the jurors.
The defense: Womanizers? Yes. Sex traffickers? No.
Defense attorneys for the brothers painted a starkly different portrayal of the sibling trio for the jury, saying that the Alexanders led a party-fueled lifestyle that involved lots and lots of consensual sex.
The brothers may be “arrogant” “womanizers,” but they are no sex traffickers, the lawyers said in their remarks, alleging that the accusers in the case are out for money.
“This case is about shame, opportunity, and money,” Oren Alexander’s attorney, Teny Geragos — who represented Sean “Diddy” Combs at his sex-trafficking trial last year — said in her opening statement.
The Alexanders, each wearing a suit jacket with a white dress shirt, listened intently while lawyers for Oren and Tal Alexander delivered separate opening statements, sometimes leaning forward in their seats at the defense table.
Geragos described the Alexanders as successful and ambitious “single men who liked to pursue women, at nightclubs, at bars, at restaurants, on apps — in other words, everywhere that single men in their 20s and 30s pursued women.”
The women were attracted to the brothers and their lifestyle, and the brothers engaged in consensual sex with women who typically and amicably stayed in touch with them, she said.
Oren and Tal Alexander began their real estate careers at Douglas Elliman before launching their own brokerage, Official, in 2022. Alon Alexander was an executive at his family’s private security firm.
“Remember, two things can be true at the same time,” Gergaos told the jury. “You may not approve of his lifestyle, but you can still find him not guilty of sex trafficking.”
Gergaos argued that the Alexanders’ accusers took drugs voluntarily and that no toxicology reports back up their accounts.
“Many of the accusers were ashamed after they had a one-night stand with one or more of the brothers,” she said.
Tal Alexander’s defense attorney, Deanna Paul, told the jury that the brothers were “party boys” and “womanizers” in their early 20s — but that this is not a crime.
“They slept with many, many women,” Paul said, adding that the way the siblings talked about their sexual encounters was “crude” and “arrogant,” but it wasn’t sex trafficking.
There was no “commercial sex operation” and no evidence that anyone was drugged involuntarily, Paul said. “There are no contemporaneous reports to law enforcement,” she added.
The judge overseeing the brothers’ trial, US District Judge Valerie Caproni, has said that the trial is expected to last about a month, running through the end of February.
Read the original article on Business Insider
The post Alexander bros are brutal rapists who ‘celebrated their crimes,’ prosecutor said as sex-trafficking trial got underway appeared first on Business Insider.
