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.
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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.
Three wealthy brothers, 10 rape accusers, one shocking indictment.
On Monday, the Alexander brothers — a trio who enjoyed money, good looks, and access to expensive homes and resorts around the world — will sit through the third day of deliberations in their federal sex-trafficking trial.
A Manhattan jury is considering the fates of these three men, former luxury real estate brokers Tal and Oren Alexander, and Oren’s twin brother Alon, who worked for his parents’ private security firm.
There is much to weigh.
Ten women, all testifying under pseudonyms, told jurors they were raped — sometimes through violence, sometimes after being drugged senseless, sometimes by more than one brother at once.
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None called the police.
Prosecutors have argued that there was too much corroborating evidence, too much genuine pain in the women’s words for their accounts to be false.
Defense lawyers countered that the sex was consensual, and that the women later invented or imagined stories of violence and violation out of regret or in hopes of a lawsuit payday.
After testimony by more than 30 prosecution witnesses and three witnesses for the defense, a six-man, six-woman jury must now agree on a complex, ten-count indictment that could put the brothers away for life.
Here is a count-by-count roadmap to that still-pending decision.
The Hamptons backyard where the youngest accuser in the Alexander brothers sex-trafficking trial says she was raped after being handed a drugged drink in a hot tub.
Southern District of New York/Business Insider
Count one: sex trafficking conspiracy
All three brothers are charged with conspiring to sex traffic four women who testified they were lured with something of value (a Hamptons beach getaway), only to be drugged or overpowered and then raped.
The youngest testified that she was drugged and raped at a Hamptons party by two brothers and two other men in 2009, after sneaking away from her boarding school, missing her high school prom.
To convict on this top count, jurors must find that between 2008 and 2021, the Alexanders worked together to get at least one of the four women to the Hamptons with the purpose of attacking her. They must also find that, for at least one woman, force, fraud, or coercion was then used to compel sex with at least one of the brothers.
All three brothers are charged with this count, which carries a potential sentence of 10 years to life in prison.
Count two: the sex trafficking Lindsey Acree
Lindsey Acree, who has a lawsuit pending against the brothers, told jurors that she was 25 when she and a girlfriend were invited to the siblings’ East Hampton rental home in 2011.
Acree said that soon after arriving, she was urged to enjoy the backyard jacuzzi, where Tal handed her a glass of wine that made her feel like a “zombie.”
She said that when she regained consciousness, Tal and a second man were raping her on the floor of the home’s gym.
At some point in her assault, Tal set up a tripod and camera, she said. “They were laughing a lot,” she told jurors of the two men. “I was on the ground. I couldn’t move.”
Tal alone is charged with this count.
Count three: Sex Trafficking Bela Koval
Bela Koval, a native of Ukraine, told jurors she was a 25-year-old model when Alon paid for her and a girlfriend to fly from Chicago to New York for a weekend at the brothers’ Sag Harbor rental home in 2016.
All three brothers greeted the women at the door, she said. They were taken yachting and served meals prepared by a private chef — expenses that prosecutors say the brothers shared.
Koval told the jury that at a pool party the next day, she sipped a drink handed to her by Oren that made her unsteady, “like a wave overtook my body.”
She said she felt still worse — “like my whole body was tranquilized” — after Alon gave her a glass of water. “I was unable to scream” as Oren raped her, she testified.
All three brothers are charged with sex-trafficking Koval.
An evidence photo shows the Sag Harbor mansion where Maya Miller testified she was raped by Tal Alexander in 2014.
Southern District of New York/Business Insider
Count four: sex trafficking Maya Miller
Maya Miller told jurors she was a 23-year-old aspiring model and about to enter nursing school when she and a girlfriend were invited by Tal to a summer weekend at the brothers’ Sag Harbor home in 2014.
Miller told the jury that she agreed because Tal promised to reimburse her for her flight from Nevada to New York and that the trip would be all-expenses-paid.
“It was the biggest home I’d ever been in,” she said of the mansion, where she and her friend were treated to a boat ride and meals by a private chef.
Tal turned “angry” as she remained sober through the second day, telling her, “I thought I invited fun girls,” Miller testified.
She testified that Tal raped her in the shower the next morning as she cried and struggled to scream.
Tal alone is charged with this count.
An evidence photo shows the Hamptons mansion where Isa Brooks testified she was raped by Tal Alexander, Alon Alexander, and two other men in 2009.
Southern District of New York/Business Insider
Count five: sex trafficking a minor
This final sex-trafficking count concerns Isa Brooks.
The Netherlands native testified she was 16 when she and a dormmate skipped their high school prom to accept a party promoter’s invite to the brothers’ Southampton mansion in 2009.
“I always heard it was, like, the place to be on Memorial Day weekend,” she said of the Hamptons.
She told the jury that during a party hours later, after drinking tequila in the backyard hot tub, “I was feeling woozy, kind of spinny.”
Brooks said she stumbled to a bedroom, where Tal began kissing her, and told her “his brother was going to join us.”
Brooks told the jury that she fell in and out of consciousness, and remembered “in flashes” being raped by Tal, Alon — the “more shy” twin — and two other men, including the one who’d given her tequila in the hot tub.
“I was wondering why they hated me,” she told the jury.
Tal and Alon are charged with this count.
Prosecutor Andrew Jones questioned Bela Koval, who testified she was raped by Oren Alexander in 2016.
Jane Rosenberg/Reuters
Count six: inducing Bela Koval to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity
This count concerns Bela Koval, the woman who testified she was raped by Oren after being invited to Sag Harbor in 2016.
It alleges that the three brothers caused Koval to travel across state lines, from Chicago to New York, so that she could be forced or coerced into “unlawful sexual activity,” meaning her alleged rape by Oren Alexander.
Prosecutors sought to prove this count by showing jurors communications among the brothers, including a text chain in which they mentioned Koval and her girlfriend, and joked about trying to “orgy them out.” All three brothers are charged with this count.
Count seven: inducing Maya Miller to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity
This count concerns Maya Miller, the woman who testified she was raped by Tal in the shower of a Sag Harbor mansion in 2014.
Tal alone is charged with this count.
The Norwegian Sky cruise ship, where a woman says she was raped by Alon and Oren Alexander in 2012.
Southern District of New York/Business Insider
Count eight: aggravated sexual abuse by force or intoxicant
This count alleges that Alon and his twin Oren sexually abused a heavily-drugged Rhonda Stone in the cabin of a Norwegian Sky cruise ship in 2012.
Stone testified she was 23 years old when she and her older sister went on a so-called “Groove Cruise” — a three-day trip to Miami and the Bahamas featuring round-the-clock live music and DJs.
She said she lost consciousness after drinking a mixed drink handed to her by one of the brothers, and woke up “naked in the bed,” and unable to move or speak as the two took turns raping her.
Alon and Oren Alexander are charged with this count.
Count nine: sexual abuse of a physically incapacitated person
This count offers an alternate theory of sexual abuse and also concerns Rhonda Stone and the 2012 cruise trip.
To convict, the jury must find that Stone was “physically incapable of declining participation” in a sexual act.
Alon and Oren are charged with this count.
Amelia Rosen testified she was 17 years old when Oren Alexander filmed her having sex with himself and a second man.
Jane Rosenberg/Reuters
Count 10: sexual exploitation of a minor
This count concerns Amelia Rosen, who prosecutors allege was 17 years old and incapacitated when she was videotaped having sex with Oren and a second man in a Manhattan apartment in 2009.
Jurors appeared visibly upset when the video was shown to them in court. Prosecutors said it shows Rosen slurring her words and barely able to stand.
“I can hardly understand what I was saying,” Rosen testified tearfully when shown snippets of the video in court.
In times of geopolitical chaos, the average person might watch a meditation video or stock up on canned goods. The wealthiest among us, however, might turn to a luxury underground bunker instead.
“When a war breaks out, or when America bombs Iran, it does cause a spike in our business,” Ron Hubbard, founder and CEO of Atlas Survival Shelters, told Business Insiderin July.
This month,Hubbard said he saw a “big spike” in interest from individuals in the Middle East, and especially the UAE, after the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.He said he also saw a moderate business bump in the US as for the typical client request: a place to protect their family.
Larry Hall, the owner of luxury bunker company Survival Condo, told Business Insider back in July that he’s seen increased interest during geopolitical conflicts.
Hubbard said it’s safe to assume that most billionaires have some sort of shelter, though relatively few have extremely extravagant bunkers that cost tens of millions of dollars. Hall said he’s built a bunker complex with a swimming pool, and others have included a shooting range or bowling alley. Over the summer, he said he was negotiating bunker sales between $1 million and $2 million.
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As Hall sees it, bunkers have become a “new status symbol of the elite” in the post-pandemic era, and are no longer as taboo as they used to be.
The interiors of Atlas Survival Shelter bunkers can include wine cellars and televisions.
Ron Hubbard
Larry Hall has built bunkers with a pool
Survival Condo Projects
Some of the country’s biggest tech names have hopped on the prepper trend in the last decade, buying underground shelters and collections of guns.
LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman told the New Yorker in 2017 that he thinks more than half of his Silicon Valley billionaire peers have bought some sort of end-of-world hideout.
Here are some of the tech millionaires and billionaires who have invested in doomsday planning.
Bunkers — or similar tunnels or shelters
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t confirmed reports that he has a survival bunker, but said on an episode of the podcast “This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von” in 2025 that he has an “underground tunnel” at his ranch in Hawaii.
In 2023, Wired reported that Zuckerberg was building a 5,000-square-foot underground shelter at the ranch. A year later, local news outlet Hawaii News Now reported that county planning documents included a “storm shelter” measuring almost 4,500 square feet. Wired reported in July 2025 that, according to planning documents, Zuckerberg bought 962 acres of land across from the existing compound and added more buildings.
The Meta CEO downplayed the initial bunker reports during an interview with Bloomberg in December, comparing the space to “a basement.”
“There’s just a bunch of storage space and like, I don’t know, whatever you want to call it, a hurricane shelter or whatever,” he said. “I think it got blown out of proportion as if the whole ranch was some kind of Doomsday bunker, which is just not true.”
A representative for Zuckerberg directed BI to his comments to Bloomberg.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has also denied having a bunker, saying instead that he has “reinforced basements” when Von, the podcaster, asked whether he had a hideout.
“I have underground, concrete, heavy, reinforced basements, but I don’t have anything I would call a…” Altman started to say, before Von cut him off, laughing and saying that it sounded like a bunker. Von described a bunker as “a place you could hide when it all goes off,” and Altman repeated that he didn’t yet have what he would consider a bunker.
“But it has been on my mind, not because of AI, but just because people are dropping bombs in the world again,” Altman said.
He didn’t share details of his existing “structures” at a WSJ Tech Live event in 2023, either, but did note that none of them would be helpful if artificial intelligence “goes wrong.” He also told the New Yorker in 2016 that he has a plot of land in Big Sur, California, that he could fly to if necessary.
PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel attempted to build a 10-bedroom compound in New Zealand, but the local government rejected his plans after environmentalists complained. Some suspected that parts of the estate were meant to be a doomsday bunker.
Hall told Business Insider that he’s been “flabbergasted” by some of the reported shelter locations, since California and New Zealand are near active tectonic plate boundaries.
“They’re the two places you don’t want to be building bunkers, and yet allegedly these billionaires are building in those two places,” he said.
Representatives for Altman and Thiel did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Other preparations include guns and eye surgery
Some opt for different doomsday preparations. Altman also previously told the New Yorker that he has “guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force.”
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told the New Yorker he’s bought guns, ammo, and motorcycles. And he’s taken it one step further — he said that in 2015, he got laser eye surgery to hopefully better his chances of survival.
Interest in doomsday-esque materials doesn’t just extend to those who are preparing for the end of the world.
Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus and Anduril, hasn’t referred to himself as a prepper but he owns a sizable collection of older military-grade vehicles. He said on an episode of Bloomberg’s “The Circuit” that he also owns decommissioned missile silos, some of which extend underground, where he stores what he says is the world’s largest video game collection.
“I put that in one of my missile bases, 200 feet underground,” Luckey told Bloomberg’s Emily Chang. Representatives for Luckey and Huffman did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Hall said that he thinks the association with prominent tech leaders has helped his business.
“A lot of people like to live vicariously through what other people do,” he said.
Six-figure private charter flights, chauffeured drives, hours-long waits to cross borders: Some wealthy travelers and expats in the UAE are doing whatever it takes to evacuate the Gulf region amid air strikes and the possibility of escalation.
“Demand is definitely increasing,” Glenn Phillips, a PR and advertising manager at global charter firm Air Charter Services, told Business Insider, adding that “there are an increasingly limited number of aircraft willing and able to fly to and from the area.”
On Monday, two days after the start of the US and Israel’s war against Iran, flights out of the United Arab Emirates — whose two main airports were damaged by Iranian air strikes — were still few and far between, and major hubs, including Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait, had to shut down due to airspace restrictions.
That left wealthy people in financial hotspots like Dubai and Abu Dhabi — hubs for monied tourists and Western expats in recent years — scrambling to reach Oman or Saudi Arabia, two countries that had open airspace through Monday. They spent hours in the car to reach the airports, as border-crossing waits increased by the day.
It may soon get harder for travelers to reach functioning private jets. Some commercial flying had resumed from the UAE on Monday evening, but that appears to have slowed amid new missile threats. Reported attacks on the US embassy in Riyadh have similarly forced several flights to turn around or divert from the Saudi city.
In what appears to be a warning of escalating tensions that could further snowball the conflict, the US State Department on Monday night urged Americans to evacuate over a dozen Middle Eastern nations — including those that still had their airspace open to commercial and private flights, like Oman and Saudi Arabia.
Flights out for $200,000+
Charter flights can cost as much as $200,000, Jay Smedley, the owner of luxury concierge firm Dubai Key, told Business Insider. The company has arranged short-haul private charter flights to Istanbul, Cairo, and the Maldives for clients since requests began to increase on Saturday.
Flights to Europe can cost even more, with Ameerh Naran, the CEO of Vimana Private Jets, saying the firm is pricing the flights between $175,000 and $235,000.
Air Charter Services has arranged “a number” of evacuation flights — and has more scheduled on Tuesday — out of Muscat, Oman, largely for people looking to leave Dubai, Phillips said.
The trip involves a five-hour drive, plus an additional three- to four-hour wait at the Hatta border crossing, which he expects will increase.
The demand to leave the region began last week, Naran told Business Insider, adding that there was “a noticeable increase in enquiries from Friday onwards.”
“Expect long waiting queues and security check delays,” Camille d’Harambure, a general manager at luxury travel firm Lightfoot Travel, told Business Insider.
Mike D’Souza, the operations coordinator for Dubai-based chauffeur service Indus Chauffeurs, told Business Insider that the “demand appears precaution-driven rather than panic-driven.”
“There has been a clear emphasis on speed and certainty of departure, with many clients prioritizing the earliest viable routing rather than specific aircraft types or traditional preferences,” Naran said. “We have also seen increased demand for coordinated ground support to facilitate access to airports where airspace remains open.”
Phillips echoed that clients just want to get out and are not all that concerned about where “out” is.
Prices have increased with demand, Phillips added — and in some cases, even those wealthy enough to pay their way out of the Middle East are looking twice at the price tag of departure.
“Many people are taking shorter flights to places out of the region and then picking up scheduled connections for the rest of their journey to reduce full journey costs,” he said.
As former President Donald Trump seeks a second term in the White House, he’s increasingly turning to billionaires to power his campaign.
Some of them are longtime associates and supporters — true believers who know the former president from his days in the business world — while others are relative newcomers, such as longtime GOP megadonors who backed his 2024 rivals or even previously supported Democrats.
The backers represent diverse industries, from traditional red-state oil titans to formerly left-leaning Silicon Valley elite.
Each lists different reasons for their choice: Some take issue with Joe Biden’s proposed “billionaire tax,” while others prefer Trump’s tough stance on immigration.
“I share the concern of most Americans that our economic, immigration and foreign policies are taking the country in the wrong direction. For these reasons, I am planning to vote for change and support Donald Trump for President,” Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman said in a statement to Axios.
In 2022, the finance billionaire had said he would not support Trump in the primary and called on “the Republican Party to turn to a new generation of leaders.”
Here are some of the most notable billionaires who are contributing to Trump’s 2024 campaign, including to his “Trump 47” joint fundraising committee, which splits proceeds between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, and the MAGA Inc. super PAC.
