Alexander brothers each get 30 years in prison for sex trafficking

New York: Three brothers convicted of exploiting their wealth and access to luxury real estate to drug and rape dozens of women have been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

US District Judge Valerie E. Caproni on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) announced the punishment for Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander – known collectively as the Alexander Brothers – after 11 accusers spoke in court.

Some of the women choked up as they described how the assaults stole their innocence and left them haunted by nightmares and fearing men.

“It took one night, only a few hours, one invitation to completely wreck the girl I once was,” one woman, using a pseudonym to protect her identity, said as she stood at a lectern just feet from the brothers in a Manhattan courtroom.

Twins Oren and Alon, 39, and Tal Alexander, 40, were convicted in March of sex trafficking. None testified during the trial, but each spoke Tuesday before they were sentenced.

Oren Alexander addressed the packed courtroom first, saying, “I am not here to discount what they have said”, referring to the women.

He said he and his brothers came of age at the height of hook-up culture and, looking back now as a father, he regrets many of the things he said about women at that time. However, he insisted that they never broke the law.

“My brothers and I have never drugged or raped anyone. We never trafficked anyone for sex and we never conspired to hurt anyone,” he said.

Tal Alexander also denied that he drugged or raped anyone. He asked the judge to assign him to the same prison as his brothers, saying their parents, both 70 years old, hope to visit them every weekend, which might be difficult if they’re at different lock-ups.

Alon Alexander said he, too, has evolved from his regrettable past, noting that not a single woman has accused him of wrongdoing in the eight years he’s been committed to his wife: “Over time, that became my life: work, home, children, parents, community.”

The brothers stared blankly at Judge Caproni as she announced their punishment, which was less than the life sentences that federal prosecutors and some accusers had sought. Some of the 11 women who spoke during the daylong hearing wept in the Manhattan courtroom gallery.

“Your conduct was monstrous,” Caproni told the men, equating them to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as she reconciled their conviction in March with their claims that being fathers and husbands has changed them from the partying, womanising ways of their youth.

“It’s hard for me to believe the defendants changed their spots just like that,” the judge said. She added, “it strains credulity that marriage would change them from sexual predators to model gentlemen”.

Judge Caproni also said she believed the brothers should not be incarcerated at the same prison because they were a bad influence on one another. Their lawyers plan to argue that they belong together, even behind bars.

Prosecutors had sought life sentences for the brothers, whose lawyers had requested the 15-year mandatory minimum.

‘Callousness, carelessness, cruelty’

The accusers who spoke in court – and another whose statement was read by a prosecutor – were among at least 70 women who prosecutors say were assaulted by one or more of the brothers over the last two decades in posh locales including the Hamptons on Long Island and in Aspen, Colorado.

One woman who testified that Tal Alexander raped her in August 2014 said she carried “a quiet funeral in me for the person I might have become had this not happened to me”.

“Every second that Tal raped me in that shower felt like an eternity of terror,” said the woman, who used a pseudonym.

Another woman speaking about her rape in the Hamptons said: “What looked like a beautiful place became for me a mansion of horror, a mansion of dark secrets.”

Oren and Tal Alexander were once nicknamed real estate’s “A Team” for their ultra-high-end sales and celebrity clientele. After smashing sales records at industry powerhouse Douglas Elliman, they started their own firm. Alon Alexander ran their family’s private security company.

The brothers projected an exclusive lifestyle of yachts, private jets and waterfront mansions in Miami, but prosecutors said they began sexually assaulting women as early as 2001 or 2002, when they were in high school, and over time developed a pattern of drugging and raping women who they enticed to join them on luxury getaways.

In remarks before the sentence was announced, Assistant US Attorney Elizabeth Espinosa told the judge that the brothers’ “callousness, carelessness, cruelty” in repeatedly drugging and raping women over many years warranted a life prison term, especially since all their victims would be serving life sentences of pain.

The trio were arrested in 2024 and have been held without bail ever since.

AP

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