NEW YORK (AP) — Three brothers convicted of leveraging their wealthy lifestyle to drug and rape dozens of women were each sentenced Tuesday to 30 years in prison after one victim described her attack as an “eternity of terror” and the judge slammed their behavior as shameful, degenerate and monstrous.
Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander — known collectively as the Alexander Brothers — stared blankly at U.S. District Judge Valerie E. 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 March sex trafficking conviction with their claims that being fathers and husbands has changed them from the partying, womanizing 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."
Many of the women in the packed courtroom appeared to be disappointed with the sentences, which will spring the Alexanders from prison around the age most Americans are settling into retirement.
While the brothers — twins Oren and Alon, 39, and Tal Alexander, 40 — expressed regret for how they treated and regarded women, they all denied drugging and raping anyone. Their lawyers have said they will appeal.
For some of the women who spoke in court, no length of time will repair the damage they said one or more of the Alexanders did to them. Choking up, 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.
None of the brothers testified during the first phase of the trial, but each spoke Tuesday before they were sentenced.
Oren Alexander addressed the 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 hookup culture and, looking back and 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 age 70, hope to visit them every weekend, which might be difficult if they’re at different lockups.
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,” he said.
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 and Aspen, Colorado.
Lindsey Acree, an artist and gallery owner, testified that she was raped by Tal Alexander and another man at a Hamptons home in 2011 after taking a drink that she said left her feeling paralyzed. Scrapping her prepared remarks, she told Caproni that a life sentence wouldn’t begin to do justice for the women whose lives were irreparably harmed.
“This has wasted my damn time. It’s wasted your time. It’s wasted everyone in this room’s time,” Acree told the judge. Turning to the brothers, she said: “For why? For you. Because you did some really messed up stuff.”
“The biggest thing is why? Why did you do this?” Acree asked. “I don’t understand the cruelty. I don’t understand the hatred toward women.”
Another 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.”
Prosecutors had sought life sentences for the brothers, whose lawyers had requested the 15-year mandatory minimum.
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 U.S. 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.
“Women overcame all the forces telling them this was their fault, they should stay quiet, that no one would believe them,” the prosecutor said. “Despite that pain, so many came forward and 11 women testified at trial.”
The trio were arrested in 2024 and have been held without bail ever since.
The judge, Caproni, has said she believes the brothers should not be incarcerated at the same prison because they were a bad influence on one another. The brothers’ lawyers plan to argue that they belong together, even behind bars.
