'A Team' of real estate brokers faces sex crimes trial in New York

NEW YORK — The brothers operated in the glitz and glamour of the Hamptons and South Beach. Two were high-end real estate brokers dubbed ''The A Team.'' The third went to law school and ran their family's private security firm, which caters to heads of state and the rich and famous.

They frequented nightclubs, cruised on yachts and flew on private jets. One lived alongside celebrities and corporate titans on Manhattan's Billionaires' Row. The others had multimillion-dollar waterfront mansions in Miami.

But behind their posh, peripatetic facade, prosecutors say, Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander — known collectively as the Alexander Brothers — were predators who sexually assaulted, trafficked and raped dozens of women from 2008 to 2021, often after incapacitating them with drugs and sometimes recording their crimes on video.

The brothers met victims at nightclubs, parties and on dating apps, and recruited others for trips to ritzy locales, paying for their flights and lodging at high-end hotels or luxe vacation rentals before drugging and raping them, prosecutors said. In all, dozens of women have accused them of wrongdoing.

Now, the brothers — Tal, 39, and twins Alon and Oren, 38 — face a reckoning that prosecutors say was more than a decade in the making: a sex-trafficking trial that could put them in prison for the rest of their lives.

Opening statements are slated for Tuesday in the brothers' trial in federal court in Manhattan, after they were delayed a day because of heavy snowfall over the weekend in New York.

Oren and Tal Alexander, the real estate dealers who specialized in high-end properties in Miami, New York and Los Angeles, have pleaded not guilty, along with their brother Alon, who graduated from New York Law School before taking his position with the security firm.

A spokesperson for the Alexander Brothers said they ''categorically deny that anyone was drugged, assaulted, or coerced, and the government has presented no physical evidence, medical records, contemporaneous complaints, or objective proof to establish those claims.''

''This case highlights a broader concern about how the federal sex-trafficking statute is being applied,'' said the spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer. ''Congress enacted that law to address force, coercion, and exploitation; not to retroactively criminalize consensual adult relationships through inference or narrative.''

''As the defense has consistently said, allegations are not evidence,'' Engelmayer added.

The brothers' attorneys have promised to show the jury of six men and six women that prosecutors have taken innocent romantic and sexual encounters and converted them into criminal activity through clever lawyering.

Oren Alexander's attorney, Marc Agnifilo, has said the defense plans to prove that witnesses have lied to the government and that their testimony can't be trusted.

''That badly misrepresents the nature of the charges,'' the judge wrote.

Agnifilo has said the jury will hear evidence of group sex, threesomes and promiscuity. During jury selection last week, prospective jurors were asked questions related to sexual activity and sex crimes.

''The case is about sex and sexuality,'' said Agnifilo, who represented Sean ''Diddy'' Combs last year as the hip-hop mogul was acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges but convicted on lesser prostitution-related counts.

In court papers, the Alexander Brothers' lawyers wrote that among the accusers they expect to testify at trial, they had located evidence ''that undermines nearly every aspect of the alleged victims' narratives.''