‘Drugged’ and ‘unable to escape’: Sex trafficking charges rock celebrity real estate clan
Three brothers in a celebrity real estate family were charged with sex trafficking conspiracy in a case involving “dozens of victims” from Miami Beach to New York, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Twins Oren and Alon Alexander and their elder brother Tal were charged with working together to “repeatedly and violently drug, sexually assault, and rape dozens of victims,” according to a federal indictment filed in New York.
They were arrested Wednesday in Miami. The charges come in the wake of a string of lawsuits accusing the brothers of rape and sexual assault.
‘Drugged’ victims
Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said all three brothers had used “force, threats of force, fraud, and coercion” in sexually assaulting women for more than a decade.
“This conduct, as alleged, is heinous,” Williams told reporters.
Some of the victims who were drugged found themselves unable to speak or to move, leaving them unable to escape, and were left with partial memories of their assaults, Williams said.
Oren and Alon Alexander were also facing separate sexual battery charges in Miami Beach, according to arrest warrants made public Wednesday afternoon.
“Oren Alexander is innocent,” his lawyer, Susan Necheles, told USA TODAY. “The evidence will show that neither he nor his brothers ever committed a crime.”
Lawyers for Tal and Alon Alexander could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.
Civil lawsuits against the Alexander brothers
The Alexander brothers – telegenic twins Oren and Alon, and their elder brother Tal – have been the subject of several lawsuits by women alleging they were raped and possibly drugged.
Until news broke of the sexual assault allegations, Oren and Alon Alexander were fixtures of the jet set, attending glitzy parties in Miami, New York and partying in the Mediterranean.
Oren and Tal Alexander run the Alexander Team, which boasts of brokering sales worth more than $7 billion in luxury markets including New York, South Florida, and Aspen, Colorado.
“We are glad to hear that there will finally be some measure of accountability for the Alexander brothers and justice for their many victims,” the law firm Wigdor LLP, which represents several women who’ve accused the Alexanders of rape, said in a statement. “We applaud all the survivors who have had the strength and courage to speak up about their unimaginable experiences after years of pain and suffering.”
Witnesses spoke of ‘gang rapes’
In a memo asking a federal judge to deny bail, prosecutors wrote that witnesses and victims told investigators the Alexanders had been raping women since they were in high school.
“Evidence from the investigation, including multiple victim and witness accounts, shows that the Alexander Brothers began engaging in acts of sexual violence, including gang rapes, while still in high school in Miami, Florida,” the memo says.
“Each of the victims that the Government has interviewed from this period reported hearing that individuals involved −including Tal Alexander − talked about the assaults at school, boasting about ‘running train’ on their victims and saying that they wanted to ‘do it again.'”
New York Magazine cited witnesses in an August article who said the brothers often spoke of “running a train,” slang for the act of gang rape, when they were in school.
In their senior year at Michael M. Krop Senior High School in North Miami, Oren and Alon Alexander’s yearbook included a page with the question, “What was your most memorable moment at Krop?”
According to New York Magazine, Oren Alexander replied: “Riding my first ‘choo-choo’ train.”
The twins graduated in 2005.
Eleven years later, as Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander planned a 2016 trip to Tulum, Mexico, with male friends, women flown in for entertainment, and drugs including GHB − considered a “date rape” drug under federal law − the term appeared again in a group chat.
“I don’t want anyone being upset if they don’t run a 10 man train,” an unidentified member of the group wrote.
Miami charges
In affidavits, Miami Beach Police detectives accused Alon Alexander in the October 2021 group sexual assault of a woman lured to a luxury apartment on Miami Beach’s beachfron Collins Avenue under the pretext of attending a barbeque. Oren Alexander also joined that assault, the victim told Miami Beach Police Det. David Alvarez. An Alexander cousin, Ohad Fisherman, is at large, Dade County prosecutors said.
More than 30 women have alleged they were raped by Oren Alexander, Alon Alexander, or both brothers, according to a lawsuit filed by model Angelica Parker.
Parker charged that she was raped by Alon and Tal Alexander in 2012 while their brother Oren watched. They denied the allegations.
No bail, prosecutors urge
In a letter to U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni, prosecutors asked that the three brothers be held without bail., citing the nature of the crimes they’re accused of, their wealth and close connections to Israel, where extradition to the U.S. can be a “drawn-out” process.
“After relying on their substantial wealth and connections to carry out and conceal their crimes for years, all three defendants now face charges carrying potential sentences in prison of fifteen years to life,” assistant U.S. attorneys Kaiya Arroyo and Elizabeth A. Espinosa wrote.
The three brothers “pose an ongoing and significant danger to the community and present a serious risk of flight,” the prosecutors said.
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This article was originally appeared on USA TODAY
