New York jury finds Alexander brothers guilty of sex trafficking 

MANHATTAN (CN) — A federal jury convicted Oren, Alon and Tal Alexander on sex trafficking charges Monday, ending a grueling five-week trial that saw testimony from 11 women who claimed they were raped by at least one of the brothers.

After deliberating for more than 20 hours across three days, the jurors convicted the brothers on all counts they were facing, including conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and sex trafficking of a minor.

Each of the brothers shook their heads as the verdict was being read out. Tal Alexander rested his head in his hands on the defense table.

They could face life in prison when they’re jointly sentenced on Aug. 6.

Attorney Marc Agnifilo, who represents Oren Alexander, told reporters on Monday that the defense sees “a lot of avenues” to appeal the verdict going forward.

“Today was not the outcome we were looking for obviously, but our resolve is unshaken,” he said.

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton said in a statement the New York jurors “saw the Alexander’s conduct for what it was — calculated, brutal sexual abuse that, unimaginably, the defendants celebrated.”

“This verdict cannot undo the effects of heinous abuse the Alexanders’ many victims endured, but it does send a message: New Yorkers want to bring an end to sex trafficking in all our communities,” Clayton added.

Prosecutors accused the wealthy Israeli American men, two of whom were successful brokers in luxury real estate, of using drugs, alcohol and sometimes brute force to carry out numerous sexual assaults on young women and teenagers for over a decade.

Jurors spent the last month observing grisly evidence of the men’s scrutinized sexual behavior, including tearful testimony from purported victims, crude messages and even a video Oren Alexander filmed of himself having sex with a “far from sober” 17-year-old.

The brothers did not testify in their own defense.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Madison Smyser told the jury in January that the brothers “had a playbook” for their purported crimes: tout their influence as wealthy real estate brokers and socialites, ply the women with drugs and alcohol and rape them — sometimes amid pleas to stop.

Other times, Smyser said, the women were so inebriated that they were unable to speak at all.

One woman, who testified in January under the pseudonym Katie Moore, told the jury that she met Alon Alexander at an NBA watch party at Hollywood A-lister Zac Efron’s apartment in 2012. That turned into a night out at a Manhattan club, where Moore said, despite drinking very little, she lost control of her body and eventually blacked out.

She awoke in a bed to a naked Alon Alexander standing over.

“The first thing I said to him was, ‘I don’t want to have sex with you,’” Moore testified. “And his response was to laugh in my face and say, ‘You already did.’”

In addition to testimony from women like Moore, prosecutors repeatedly invoked crude messages penned by the brothers to each other and on online message boards as further proof of their supposed sex trafficking scheme. In one text, Oren Alexander said the “boys need to hunt” because “we are running out of prey.”

And a 2008 post on a blog called “Bent on Bitches,” which prosecutors say was written by the brothers, said “it’s not rape if she doesn’t remember” and if “she secretly wants it.”

During summations, Oren Alexander’s lawyer Marc Agnifilo urged jurors to disregard that language, arguing there was “no actual evidence” that the brothers wrote it.

“Are they tasteless? They’re beyond tasteless. They’re shocking. They’re awful,” Agnifilo said. “I submit to you it does not help you. It doesn’t help you make your decision. It doesn’t.”

Aside from the blog, the brothers’ defense team repeatedly challenged the criminality of their sex lives in general. Alon Alexander’s lawyer Howard Srebnick conceded to the jurors that the brothers’ womanizing conduct over the years was at times “obnoxious, grotesque” and “pathetic,” but not evidence of the sprawling sex trafficking scheme for which they were charged.

Prosecutors had based their sex trafficking theory on the basis that the brothers, flexing their money and influence, lured young women to various exclusive parties and gaudy properties — at times, flying them out — to force them into sex.

But the defense was steadfast that, at every turn, the women were not “trafficked” and willingly joined the brothers. They accused prosecutors of trying to stretch the limits of federal sex trafficking law to fit their clients.

“An invitation itself is not enticement, is not luring,” Tal Alexander’s lawyer Deanna Paul told the jury. “All Tal did was invite someone to come visit him for a weekend.”

Paul was referencing the testimony of pseudonymous witness Maya Miller, who said on the stand that Tal Alexander invited her to a house in the Hamptons in 2014, where he chased her into a bathroom and raped her in the shower.

However, prosecutors argued each of the witnesses’ stories bore eerie similarities that were hard to ignore. The women who were drugged each recalled being handed drinks made by one of the brothers and reported similar symptoms. Several recounted being lured by repeated promises of afterparties.

“They had one horrific thing in common,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Jones said of the witnesses. “They were each raped by these men.”

U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni, a Barack Obama appointee in the Southern District of New York, oversaw the trial of the three men.

Oren and Tal Alexander are best known as famed luxury real estate brokers, with an illustrious list of clients that includes Leon Black, Lindsay Lohan, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. Alon Alexander, Oren Alexander’s twin, was an executive at his family’s private security company.

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