Luxury real estate brothers face trial Tuesday in sex trafficking case

NEW YORK– NEW YORK (AP) — Two luxury real estate brokers and their brother are scheduled to go on trial Tuesday in New York on sex trafficking charges, just days after their lawyers renewed their request to a New York judge to drop charges that they sexually abused dozens of women over the course of a dozen years.

Jury selection was expected to last about two days, with opening statements scheduled for next Monday for a trial expected to last until early March.

In papers filed Saturday in Manhattan federal court, defense attorneys complained that prosecutors had treated their clients unfairly by rewriting the indictment as recently as last week and recently adding charges that the defense had not had time to investigate.

The latest version of the indictment was filed Thursday, the third time in two months that prosecutors have updated an indictment accusing Oren, Tal and Alon Alexander of offering women free trips and luxury accommodations before drugging and raping them in vacation destinations like New York’s Hamptons.

Oren and Tal Alexander were luxury real estate moguls for over a decade before co-founding a real estate company, Official, specializing in high-end properties in Miami, New York and Los Angeles. Oren and Alon Alexander are 38-year-old twins, while Tal Alexander is 39. Alon, who studied law, was an executive in his family’s security firm.

Defense lawyers acknowledge that the men had sex with women, but say the women participated voluntarily. The brothers have been held without bail since their December 2024 arrest in Miami, where they lived. All three have repeatedly pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Prosecutors say the brothers typically met their victims on dating apps, at social events, at bars and nightclubs, and sometimes through party planners, before supplying them with drugs, including cocaine and psychedelic mushrooms, or drugging their drinks before sexually assaulting them.

Defense attorneys have urged Judge Valerie E. Caproni to drop some charges at this month’s trial if she does not completely dismiss them, including a conspiracy count in which the prosecution’s description was greatly reduced in size.

“The defense should not be forced to appear in court on a conspiracy count that was amended at the last minute,” the lawyers wrote.

Caproni showed some sympathy for the defense’s protest over last-minute changes to the indictment. On Friday, she rejected a Jan. 12 government request to call a witness at trial to support a conspiracy charge, saying the request came well after the Oct. 17 deadline to notify the defense of evidence in the case.

Caproni also ruled that Alon Alexander could not use his 2019 engagement and subsequent marriage as evidence that he renounced the alleged plot to sexually attack the women.

Lawyers also opposed forcing Oren Alexander to face a speedy trial on a charge of sexual exploitation of a minor, which would carry a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors allege that Oren Alexander persuaded or coerced a 17-year-old, 10-month-old disabled woman in April 2009 to engage in sexually explicit conduct that could be filmed. Defense lawyers say his birth certificate cannot be authenticated because it was issued by a former Soviet republic now in a war zone.

Defense attorneys also attacked the premise of the government’s sex trafficking charges, saying prosecutors have taken an unprecedented position that anything of value given to women to get them to a place where a sex act takes place can make commercial sex punishable under a sex trafficking law.

“The truth is that this is not just a new theory; it is an entirely new offense, one that was not created by Congress and is not even contemplated in the sex trafficking statute,” they wrote.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported last week that a 45-year-old Australian woman who had accused Oren and Alon Alexander of sexual assault was found dead near Sydney late last year. The newspaper reported that a spokesperson for the NSW Coroner’s Office said the death was being treated as “not suspicious”.