By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK, March 9 (Reuters) - Three wealthy brothers, including two of New York's top real estate brokers, were found guilty on Monday at a closely watched sex trafficking trial over allegations they lured women and girls to exclusive parties where they drugged and raped them.
Oren Alexander, Tal Alexander and Alon Alexander had each pleaded not guilty to all charges they respectively faced in an indictment alleging trafficking and other criminal conduct related to seven victims.
Oren and
Tal Alexander co-founded the luxury real estate brokerage Official, while Alon Alexander was an executive at a private security company.
Defense lawyers had contended that the women were willing participants who were not paid to have sex.
Tal Alexander faced seven charges in total, and his twin brothers Oren and Alon faced six.
Over the course of a six-week trial in Manhattan federal court, eleven women testified that one or more of the brothers sexually abused them.
In his closing argument on March 3, prosecutor Andrew Jones said the brothers masqueraded as party boys but really were predators.
"They used a consistent playbook to lure, isolate and rape their victims," Jones said. "They did it with callousness and a perverse sense of pride."
Defense lawyers acknowledged that the brothers had discussed sex amongst themselves in crass terms and behaved in ways that angered women with whom they had relationships. But they argued the sexual encounters at issue were consensual.
"He should be and is embarrassed by how he behaved over these years," Howard Srebnick, a lawyer for Alon Alexander, said in his closing argument on March 3. "That doesn't make the conduct a crime."
The three brothers were arrested in December 2024 and have been jailed since then at Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center.
Each brother had his own legal defense team. Oren Alexander's lawyers include Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos, who last year defended rapper and music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs at his sex trafficking trial.
Combs is serving a four-year prison sentence after being convicted on prostitution charges, but acquitted of the more serious sex trafficking charges he faced that could have landed him in prison for life.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York;Editing by Noeleen Walder and Rosalba O'Brien)
