Judge declines to dismiss sex trafficking case against real estate brothers

NEW YORK (AP) — A two-decade pattern of alleged sex trafficking by two luxury real estate brokers and their brother wasn’t “just men behaving badly,” a federal judge said as she left their indictment largely intact and rejected defense efforts to minimize the gravity of crimes involving dozens of women.

In an Oct. 17 opinion unsealed Wednesday, Judge Valerie E. Caproni expressed skepticism about some of the arguments defense lawyers offered as they tried to get the charges thrown out.

“As much as Defendants want to characterize the charged conduct as just men behaving badly, that is not what the Indictment charged,” she wrote.

She said the charges allege “that three grown men conspired to entice women and girls” to travel domestically and sometimes internationally to luxury hotels where they were drugged and sometimes physically restrained before they were raped or sexually assaulted.

Caproni did dismiss one attempted sex trafficking count, finding that the five-year statute of limitations had expired.

The three brothers — Oren, Tal and Alon Alexander — remain held without bail after pleading not guilty to charges in Manhattan federal court.

Oren Alexander and Tal Alexander sold high-end properties in New York City, Miami and Los Angeles before the charges were filed alleging that they used their wealth and influence to attack women from 2002 to 2021.

A defense lawyer said last week that the defense plans to show a jury that witnesses are lying at a trial scheduled for early January. The judge has said she might postpone the trial until May.

Caproni rejected defense assertions that the alleged crimes by the brothers were more like “date rape” allegations more normally prosecuted in state courts.

“That badly misrepresents the nature of the charges,” the judge wrote.

She said the allegations make clear that the alleged crimes were not “sexual assaults that serendipitously occurred” when a group of people in their 20s or 30s went on vacation, or during dates or at parties.

At a hearing last week, defense attorney Marc Agnifilo said the jury will hear evidence at trial of group sex, threesomes and promiscuity.

“The case is about sex and sexuality,” he said.

In court papers, defense lawyers wrote that among the accusers they expect to testify at trial, they’d located evidence “that undermines nearly every aspect of the alleged victims’ narratives.”

They said they believe “that many witnesses are going to testify untruthfully on direct examination — whether it be because of their own current situation, their motive to lie for monetary gain, or their situation at the time.”

These witnesses “do not want to admit to the world that they consensually engaged in sexual activity with any of the Alexander brothers,” the lawyers said.

But Caproni wrote that she fails to understand how certain categories of information cited by the defense are likely to disprove the charges, such as proof that victims continued to contact or interact with the brothers or that they initiated contact with them.

She noted that a handful of messages cited by the defense regarding one accuser are contradicted by other messages, including one in which she expressed how she did not know how someone could so dislike her that they would harm her.