A trio of wealthy brothers was found guilty of federal sex-trafficking charges in Manhattan on Monday in a grand-slam verdict convicting them of each count they faced in a 10-count indictment.
The jury deliberated for three days before announcing a verdict for former luxury real estate brokers Tal Alexander, 39, and Oren Alexander, 38, as well as for Oren’s twin, Alon Alexander, a former executive in his parents’ private security firm.
The three brothers sat at the defense tables, shaking their heads as the verdict was read. Sentencing was set for August 6 for each defendant.
Any sex trafficking conviction, including for the top count of sex-trafficking conspiracy, carries a potential maximum sentence of life in prison.
The verdict follows a five-week trial in which prosecutors called 10 rape accusers to testify, none of whom had reported their incidents to police.
The women gave compelling, sometimes tearful testimony about attacks in luxe locations in Manhattan, the Hamptons, Aspen, and Tel Aviv stretching back to 2008, when the brothers were in their early 20s.
They said the brothers used false promises of “afterparties” or fun weekend getaways to lure them into the worst experiences of their lives — being sexually violated through violence or a drugged drink.
Two women told jurors that they were drugged and then attacked by two of the brothers at the same time.
One said the twins took turns raping her inside a cruise ship cabin in 2012. The other said she was attacked by Tal and Alon Alexander and two other men in the bedroom of a Southampton vacation home in 2009, when she was 16 years old.
“I was wondering why they hated me,” the woman recalled thinking as she fell in and out of consciousness on a bed.
All ten women told jurors that in the hours and days after they were attacked, shame and fear kept them from telling anyone but their closest friends.
Only when they saw that the brothers were being sued and arrested — over allegations like their own — did they find the courage to step forward, the women testified.
“Because this feels bigger than me,” one accuser explained of coming forward now, fourteen years after she said she was drugged and raped at age 20 after a party at the Manhattan penthouse of actor Zac Efron.
“I’m 34 years old now, and I know who I am,” another accuser explained of coming forward. “And I wanted someone to be held accountable for what happened to me.”
Defense lawyers maintained that any sex was consensual and that the accusations were the product of regret and faulty memories.
They pointed to inconsistencies about timing and the women’s failure to take drug tests or report the incidents to law enforcement, and noted that many of the women communicated with the brothers
The defense also challenged whether the accounts the women described added up to sex trafficking, the charge behind half the counts in the ten-count indictment.
To convict on sex trafficking, jurors needed to find that the brothers used force, fraud, or coercion — including by secretly drugging drinks — to cause a commercial sex act, defined as sex in return for something of value.
Prosecutors said that the “something of value” was the brothers’ promise of a beach weekend at a Hamptons mansion, or an invite to go from a club to a hotel room for a fun “after-party.”
Defense lawyers countered that what was described in testimony was not sex trafficking because, in their view, there was no quid-pro-quo relationship proven between the lure — the “something of value” — and the alleged sex.
“The commerce — the thing of value — must be a result of the sex,” argued Marc Agnifilo, defense attorney for Oren Alexander.
In July, Agnifilo won a partial acquittal in another high-profile Manhattan sex trafficking case, that of entertainment and lifestyle entrepreneur Sean “Diddy” Combs.
In that trial, Agnifilo similarly argued that the federal sex-trafficking statute was being stretched beyond its original purpose of protecting sex workers.
Combs was also acquitted of racketeering; he was convicted of transporting for purposes of prostitution and is serving a four-year prison term.
