A federal prosecutor spent more than three hours Tuesday walking a Manhattan jury through the alleged crimes of three brothers who built their names in luxury real estate and, according to the government, used that wealth to sexually assault women and girls for years. Oren, Alon, and Tal Alexander face 10 charges in total, including conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion. If convicted, they could face life in prison.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Jones delivered the government's closing argument, drawing on testimony from 11 women who took the stand during the trial. Each of those witnesses, several of whom testified under pseudonyms, claimed she was sexually assaulted by at least one of the brothers. None of the three defendants took the stand in their own defense.
Jones told jurors that the Alexander brothers followed a repeating pattern. According to the prosecutor, the defendants leveraged their money and access to exclusive social circles to draw young women into private settings where they could be isolated and attacked.
The defendants had a playbook, using exciting and exclusive things — parties, boats, mansions, travel and accommodations — to entice girls and women to private homes, to boats, to parties, so they could assault them.
The government alleges the brothers used a combination of force and drugs to assault women. Several witnesses testified they believed their drinks were spiked while in the brothers' company. Jones argued the strategy targeted "smaller girls," some of whom were underage.
The prosecutor walked jurors through specific accounts, Courthouse News Service reported. A pseudonymous witness identified as Maya Miller said Tal Alexander raped her in the shower at a house in the Hamptons. Katie Moore, also testifying under a pseudonym, claimed Alon Alexander raped her while she was completely unconscious. And a pseudonymous woman identified as Amelia Rosen said she was just 17 years old when, according to the government, Oren Alexander filmed himself raping her after her body had been "plied with drugs and alcohol."
Jones played more than two minutes of that video for the jury Tuesday. He also pointed to a text message in which Alon Alexander allegedly boasted that he "took down [a] 17-year-old" after what prosecutors described as an assault of a teenager in a hotel room bathroom. Prosecutors introduced a text from Oren Alexander stating the "boys need to hunt" because "we are running out of prey." And the government claims the brothers authored a 2008 blog post on a site called "Bent on Bitches" that stated "it's not rape if she doesn't remember" and if "she secretly wants it."
Perhaps the most striking evidence was Oren Alexander's own words, captured on video and played in open court.
I'm serious. I drug bitches.
Jones told the jury that despite the fact that most of the women who testified did not know each other, their accounts bore striking similarities in how they described being drugged, the symptoms they experienced and the brothers' repeated use of afterparty invitations to isolate them.
They had one horrific thing in common: they were each raped by these men.
Alon Alexander's attorney Howard Srebnick began the defense closings Tuesday and took a markedly different approach. Srebnick acknowledged his client's behavior toward women may have been "obnoxious, grotesque, pathetic," but argued it did not amount to criminal conduct. Srebnick said his client "is not a mindreader," referencing the fact that one of the witnesses who was 17 at the time did not explicitly tell Alon Alexander she did not want to have sex with him.
We don't typically have people sign a consent form before engaging in sexual activity.
Srebnick attempted to recast the brothers' crude messages as "shock jock" humor, comparing their banter to that of radio host Howard Stern. He also referenced a remark by President Donald Trump in an attempt to characterize the messages as harmless talk. Prosecutors objected on relevance grounds to both the Stern and Trump references, and U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni sustained those objections. Caproni, a Barack Obama appointee, also urged the defense to keep its closings succinct.
Srebnick will continue his final arguments on Wednesday. After he finishes, lawyers for Tal and Oren Alexander will deliver their own closings. Jurors are expected to begin deliberations toward the end of the week.
The Alexander brothers are Israeli Americans known for their ties to high-end real estate in New York and South Florida. Oren and Tal Alexander launched their careers as luxury brokers in 2009, when they facilitated the sale of an $8.2 million Manhattan penthouse to attorney Jim Ferraro. They have since sold homes to clients including Leon Black, Lindsay Lohan, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.
That profile is central to the government's theory. Prosecutors allege the brothers weaponized exactly that world of wealth, access and exclusivity to lure women into situations where they could be assaulted. The lifestyle was not incidental to the alleged crimes. According to the government, it was the mechanism.
The jury will soon weigh 10 federal charges against three defendants, with testimony from 11 women and a body of documentary evidence that includes video, text messages and online posts. The defense strategy rests on reframing the brothers' conduct as boorish but consensual. The government's case rests on a pattern allegation: that these men identified targets, drugged them, assaulted them and then bragged about it in writing and on camera.
A man who says "I'm serious. I drug bitches" on video is now asking a jury to believe his conduct was just talk. That jury will have every opportunity to decide whether the evidence supports the charges or the defense. That is how the system is supposed to work. And when the charges are this serious and the alleged conduct this predatory, the system had better get it right.
