Alexander brothers denied bail by NYC judge in sex-trafficking case, citing flight risk, danger
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The legal troubles of the Alexander brothers
The Alexander brothers have been accused in civil, state and federal cases of systematically raping and sex trafficking women in Florida, New York, Colorado, Mexico and Russia. Federal prosecutors say that more than 60 women, including a minor, have come forward. In December, the brothers were arrested in Miami by federal and local authorities, and are currently awaiting trial in Brooklyn’s federal detention center. All three brothers pleaded not guilty and their attorneys have denied the allegations.
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More than a month after their arrests, a federal judge in New York on Wednesday ordered the detention of three wealthy brothers from Miami Beach before trial on sex-trafficking charges that allege the Alexander siblings drugged and raped dozens of women over the past two decades.
U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni reached her decision on the pre-trial fate of twins Alon and Oren, 37, and older brother Tal, 38, after a three-hour hearing in the Southern District of New York. In denying bonds, the judge found the brothers posed a danger to the community and a risk of flight if they were released on bail proposals in excess of $100 million each.
“They are facing very serious charges,” Caproni said, noting that the brothers could face from 15 years to life in prison if convicted at trial. “This will be a horrible trial for their family to sit through.”
The brothers, represented by defense teams from Miami and New York, were not present for the bail review in Manhattan federal court, as they were being held at a federal detention center in Miami.
During the hearing, Alon and Tal appealed a pair of Miami judges’ orders denying bonds while Oren faced his initial bail review. Lawyers for all three argued that the brothers were neither dangerous nor flight risks, saying their parents were willing to pledge the family’s high-priced real estate assets in Bal Halbour, Miami Beach, the Bahamas and Tel Aviv to secure their bail while each brother stayed in different Miami high-rise apartments guarded by private security around the clock.
The parents, Shlomo and Orly Alexander, were in the New York courtroom Wednesday.
But Caproni said their bond proposals amounted to the Alexander family setting up a “private jail,” an option not available to indigent defendants accused of similar serious crimes.
All three brothers were arrested last month in Miami Beach on a charge of conspiring to commit sex trafficking between 2010 and 2021 in Manhattan, the Hamptons and South Florida, as well as on a charge of sex trafficking a woman [victim-2] in New York using force, fraud or coercion in September 2016. Separately, Tal Alexander faces a charge of sex trafficking a woman [victim-1] in New York in July 2011.
Each of the three charges carries up to life in prison, but the two sex trafficking counts carry a mandatory-minimum sentence of 15 years.
The brothers’ prospects of obtaining bonds — and their freedom — before trial were expected to be remote given that the same U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York prevailed in blocking bail for other idefendants accused of sex trafficking, from the late Manhattan financier Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide while in detention in 2019, to rap mogul Diddy, who is awaiting trial behind bars.
Read More: Months after dramatic raid, Diddy indicted in connection to sex trafficking probe
Oren’s polygraph exam
Before Wednesday’s hearing, Oren’s defense team took the unusual step of offering as evidence a polygraph examination administered by a former FBI agent. James Orr, the retired Tampa-based agent, concluded Oren was truthful when the defendant answered “no” to the following four questions:
1. Did you have sex with [victim-2] when you knew she had been covertly given drugs? 2. In New York, did you have sex with [victim-2] when you knew she had been covertly given drugs? 3. Did you have any kind of sex with [victim-2] when you knew she had secretly been given drugs? 4. In New York, did you have any kind of sex with [victim-2] when you knew she had secretly been given drugs?
In his examination, Orr found that Oren displayed “no significant reactions indicative of deception” in answering the questions.
His twin brother, Alon, was also asked by the former FBI agent in a polygraph exam whether he had sex in New York, Florida or elsewhere with “any woman when you knew she had been covertly given drugs.” Alon answered no.
Again, the ex-agent found his responses truthful.
‘Horrific sexual violence’ by brothers: feds
Before Wednesday’s hearing, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York filed a hard-hitting court document, saying that “each defendant has separately been accused of forcible rape by at least ten women.”
Prosecutors restated allegations that “over 40 women” have reported to the FBI that they were “forcibly raped or sexually assaulted by at least one of the Alexander brothers” between 2002 and 2021.
“At trial, numerous victims ... are expected to testify about the horrific sexual violence committed against them by the Alexander Brothers,” prosecutors Kaiya Arroyo, Elizabeth Espinosa and Andrew Jones wrote in a letter to Judge Caproni. Their testimony “will be corroborated” by non-victim witnesses along with electronic, physical and documentary evidence.
“Moreover, the victims’ accounts strongly corroborate each other, recounting similar experiences of sexual violence from the Alexander Brothers despite occurring in different settings, states, and even different decades,” the prosecutors wrote to the judge.
Sex videos found in Tal’s NY apartment
In pushing for no bonds for the brothers before trial, prosecutors revealed that FBI agents executed a search warrant on Tal’s Manhattan apartment that he previously shared with his brother, Oren, on the date of the three brothers’ arrests at their Miami Beach homes, Dec. 11.
Agents found a hard drive with photos and videos showing twin brothers Oren and Alon with other men recording images of “themselves with women in states of intoxication and undress.”
“In multiple videos, the women appear initially unaware that they were being recorded and became upset and attempted to hide or flee from the camera after realizing they were being filmed,” the prosecutors wrote to the judge.
“Multiple other videos found in Tal Alexander’s apartment depict Alon, Oren, and other men engaged in sexual contact with women who are visibly under the influence of alcohol or other substances,” their letter continues. “In some instances, at least one defendant [Alon or Oren] and another man physically manipulated the women’s bodies in order to have sex with them while the women did not actively participate in the sexual activity or turned away.”
In the letter, prosecutors urged the Manhattan federal judge to detain the three Alexander brothers before trial. They said Oren and Tal, once-celebrated luxury real estate brokers in New York, and Alon, an executive in the family’s security business in North Miami and Oren’s twin, are a danger to the community and a flight risk — possibly to their parents’ native country, Israel.
At Wednesday’s hearing, however, defense attorneys fired back, saying the seized videos show no illegal conduct.
One of Oren’s defense lawyers, Richard Klugh, said the case against the brothers was extremely weak, as he characterized the video evidence of the alleged rapes as “orgying” — not sexual assault.
Judge: ‘If a woman is visibly incapacitated it is likely rape.”
In one video discussed in court, a young woman is shown lying naked on a bed and mumbling. One of the brothers positions her body in a way that allows him to penetrate her. Afterwards, she briefly stands, then collapses on the bed.
Klugh argued that because she was able to stand she wasn’t incapacitated.
But the judge scoffed at that notion.
“You lose on that argument — that just because someone can stand up that doesn’t mean they are not incapacitated,” Caproni said.
Earlier in the hearing, the judge also commented on the same video, saying to another defense attorney, Deanna Paul: “In my view, if a woman is visibly incapacitated it is likely rape.”
Before the hearing, lawyers for Tal Alexander issued a statement condemning the prosecution’s claim that the video evidence was incriminating.
“The government points to lawful sexual behavior that it finds offensive, but is absolutely not illegal,” said Paul, whose law firm, Walden Macht Haran & Williams, is representing Tal. “It should be focused on legality, not morality. That we’re even talking about these videos shows the complete lack of evidence to support any of the three charges in the indictment.”
Prosecutors noted they have other video recordings made by Oren Alexander showing him and Alon “engaging in sexual activity with at least one identified victim.”
They said all three brothers “drugged victims, rendering them incapable of either consenting or resisting” — then, “when the victims were physically compromised or incapacitated, the defendants held them down and forcibly raped them.”
Defense: Sex was consensual, women money grabbers
Defense attorneys for the three Alexander brothers argued in court papers that they committed no sexual assaults, and that their relationships with the alleged victims were consensual and sometimes involved text messages to get together again.
Their attorneys also claimed some of the accusers of pursuing lawsuits last year just to make money off the brothers and of never bringing their complaints to authorities in real time dating back years.
At Wednesday’s hearing, they described the accusers as money grabbers. But the judge scolded them for attempting to try the case at the bail hearing, pointing out that their credibility can be argued at trial.
Federal prosecutor Andrew Jones countered that the sheer number of women who have accused the brothers — over 40 — flies in the face of a conspiracy to extort the brothers.
Jones also undercut defense arguments that the brothers had not been accused of any rapes since 2021, noting that the most recent victim in the government’s case alleges she was assaulted by one or more of them that year.
He also pointed out that just because no accusers have alleged crimes since 2021 doesn’t mean the brothers suddenly stopped, since it often takes assault victims many years to be willing to talk about their trauma.
Still, the brothers’ lawyers proffered that the women that have come forward remember very little of what happened, and it will be a challenge for prosecutors to prove that the sex with the brothers wasn’t consensual. In some cases, the women remained in contact with the brothers even after the alleged rapes — and no one reported them to police, defense lawyers said.
“One woman said, ‘I have no idea what happened,’ “ Klugh recounted.
Family pledged ‘any amount’ to release them
Klugh argued that pre-trial detention is meant for mafia bosses and cartel drug lords — not the Alexander brothers, who have pledged “any amount” of money to secure bonds while paying for private security guards to watch over them at high-rise apartments in Miami.
“Pretrial detention is meant for serious criminal organizations and their leaders, designed to address uncontrollable violent criminal activity and risks that cannot be quelled with any reasonable limitations,” Klugh wrote in a letter to Judge Caproni. “Here there is a material dispute as to whether any federal or other crime happened at all, and whether conduct in a social event was consensual or not.”
Lawyers for Alon and Tal — Howard Srebnick and Milt Williams — echoed those arguments in court filings in Manhattan federal court as well during court hearings in Miami.
“The government’s opposition, like the Detention Order [in Miami], greatly overstates the risk of flight, which our proposed bail conditions completely and fairly eliminate,” Tal’s lawyer, Williams, wrote in a letter to the judge in New York.
“Critically, the government ignores the fact that Mr. Alexander and his brothers, Alon and Oren Alexander, all of whom have no criminal history, knew of this criminal investigation since July and made no attempt to flee. Instead, the government attempts unfairly to detain Mr. Alexander for reasons that stem directly from the family’s lawfully earned wealth.”
All three Alexander brothers were arrested on charges of luring women to swank locales in New York City, the Hamptons, Aspen and Miami Beach by paying for their travel and then plying them with drug-laced drinks before allegedly raping them.
According to the FBI and federal prosecutors, 42 women have accused at least one of the three brothers of sexual assault in the sex-trafficking conspiracy indictment, which was filed in Manhattan federal court.
All three are expected to enter not guilty pleas at their eventual arraignments in New York City.
Family has properties in Tel Aviv, the Bahamas
The defense prepared a document with all of the Alexander family’s assets for review by the court and prosecutors, a record entered under seal from public scrutiny. The full extent of the family’s wealth isn’t known, but a Miami Herald analysis of public records identified residential and commercial properties with an assessed market value of more than $74 million — including the Bal Harbour home of their parents.
Read More: How much is the Alexander family worth?
All of the properties are owned by members of the family or companies tied to them, though they still have outstanding mortgages on some of them.
However, the Herald’s analysis did not include the parents’ properties in Tel Aviv and the Bahamas, which were eventually disclosed in court.
This story was updated to accurately reflect defense attorney Richard Klugh’s characterization of the government’s video evidence during the Alexander brothers’ detention hearing in New York on Wednesday.
This story was originally published January 15, 2025 at 4:42 PM.
