Israeli-American brothers convicted in New York of decades-long rape and sex trafficking operation

BBC News

Three Israeli-American brothers have been convicted of drugging and raping dozens of women over the course of many decades.

Tal Alexander, 39, and Oren Alexander, 38, rose to prominence from their sales of luxury real-estate properties in New York and Miami. Along with a third brother Alon, 38, a jury found all three guilty of sex trafficking by a jury in New York.

Prosecutors charged the brothers with using their wealth to lure women to parties and luxury homes, then violently raping them.

They were found guilty on all 10 criminal counts, including sex trafficking and sexual exploitation of a minor.

Sentencing in the case is scheduled for 6 August and the brothers could face up to life in prison.

In closing arguments, Assistant US Attorney Andrew Jones said the brothers committed crimes without remorse and with ‘a perverse sense of pride’.

During the five-week trial, 11 women who were minors at the time of the assaults testified against the brothers, alleging they gave them gifts and flew them to locations and parties where they fed them drugs before assaulting them.

Prosecutors said the brothers ‘surreptitiously’ put drugs in women’s drinks, and told jurors that they ‘physically restrained and held down their victims during the rapes and sexual assaults and ignored their screams and explicit pleas to stop’.

Jurors were shown a video during the trial of Oren Alexander raping a drugged 17-year-old at his Manhattan apartment in 2009.

During the trial, a new allegation surfaced as part of a separate lawsuit, when reality television star and top real estate agent Tracy Tutor accused Oren Alexander of drugging and sexually assaulting her in New York City in 2024.

US Attorney Jay Clayton, whose office in the Southern District of New York prosecuted the case, said the verdict is ‘an important step in our fight against sex trafficking’.

‘The jury saw the Alexander brothers’ conduct for what it was—calculated, brutal sexual abuse that, unimaginably, the defendants celebrated,’ Clayton said in a statement.

‘This verdict cannot undo the effects of the heinous abuse the Alexanders’ many victims endured, but it does send a message: New Yorkers want to bring an end to sex trafficking in all our communities.’