"THE PLAYBOYS WERE PREDATORS: HOW THE ALEXANDER BROTHERS BUILT AN EMPIRE OF ASSAULT — AND HOW A JURY FINALLY TOOK IT APART"

0:03 Kalaroga Shark Media. Good morning, I'm Garrett Fisher. Wednesday, March eighteenth, twenty twenty six. This is Daily Crime and Justice. I want to go back nine days March ninth, Manhattan Federal Court. A jury of six men and six women has been deliberating for approximately eight hours. Three brothers sit at the defense table, Tal Alexander thirty nine years old, and his twin brothers, Oran and Aylon thirty eight, all of them ensuits, all of them having maintained for months that they are innocent, that every woman who accused them was lying, that every woman who testified was motivated by shame, regret or greed.

0:50 The four women stands or an. Alexander slowly shakes his head, Tal puts his head down. Their parents are in the gallery. The back is being rubbed by a family friend, and the four women begins reading guilty, Guilty, guilty, all twelve counts for Orin, all twelve for Alon, all ten for Tal, every single count. I've been covering this trial since it opened. We did our first update back in February when the first witnesses took the stand, and I want to spend today's full episode on the complete story from the beginning, because this case is not just about three men who were convicted of federal sex crimes. It's about how wealth and status operate as a force field around predators. About how an entire industry knew or should have known, and said nothing. About how more than sixty women carried this for years before anyone with a badge and a subpoena took them seriously. Let me walk you through this tell.

1:58 Alexander was born July second, nineteen eighty six. His twin brothers, Orrin and Alon arrived three days later July fifth, nineteen eighty seven. All three were born in the United States to Israeli parents who had moved to America in the nineteen seventies. They grew up in a family with money, ambition, and social reach, and somewhere along the way, two of the three brothers found their calling luxury real estate. Tall and or In Alexander became, by any measurable standard, two of the most successful real estate brokers in the country. They built their careers at Douglas Ellman, one of the most prestigious names in the industry, before eventually launching their own firm, the Alexander Group. They sold apartments on billionaire's row.

2:41 They sold Hampton's estates. They sold the kinds of properties that are measured not in square footage but in cultural significance, the kind of homes you read about on the front page of real estate sections when a hedge fund manager decides to downsize to a mere forty million dollar penthouse. Their client list was a role call of the oldultra wealthy. Their sales records were staggering. The industry trade press called them real estates a team. They were profiled, photographed, celebrated. Orrin and Tal Alexander were not peripheral figures in their world. They were the world. Alawn Alexander moved in the same circles from a different angle. He ran the family's private security firm, the kind of business that provides protection to exactly the sort of ultra high net worth clients His brothers were selling apartments too. The Alexander brothers were not just real estate titans. They were an interconnected operation, socially and professionally woven into the highest levels of New York and Miami money. They lived accordingly, waterfront mansions in Miami.

3:45 An apartment at four hundred and thirty two Park Avenue, one of the most expensive residential towers ever built, a sliver of glass and concrete on Billionaire's Row that stands nearly fifteen hundred feet above Midtown nightclubs, where they held VIP tables. As a matter of course, private jets all expenses paid trips to the Hamptons, Aspen, the Caribbean. This was not the occasional splurge. This was their operating environment, and this the lifestyle. The access, the invitation was also their weapon. Prosecutors would later describe the brother's approach as a playbook. Find women at nightclubs, parties, and on dating apps, Dazzle them with the lifestyle. Invite them somewhere the Hamptons for a weekend, a ski trip in Colorado, a Caribbean cruise.

4:35 Make it easy to say yes, cover the flights, the hotel, the meals, and then, once you had them where you wanted them, drug them and assault them. The pattern allegedly ran from twenty ten to twenty twenty one, more than a decade, more than sixty women, according to prosecutors, women from all walks of life, artists, executives, daughters of bills, millionaires, women in their early twenties, navigating a world where men like the Alexanders held every door. Here's what's important to understand about how these situations stay hidden. It's not magic, it's not perfect planning. The Alexander brothers conduct was, according to multiple witnesses and court documents, something of an open secret.

5:21 In their industry. Women talk to each other, They warned each other, and for years nothing happened. Because when a person with that much money, that much prestige, that much industry standing is accused, even whispered about, the whispers tend to stay whispers. The women who came forward early found themselves facing the full weight of a legal team and a public relations apparatus. In September twenty twenty five, court documents revealed that Orin Alexander had allegedly sent threatening messages to at least one victim after an assault, messages that read, nothing happened. If you keep talking about it, I'm going to ruin you. Of course he did. The brothers also filed a five hundred million dollar defamation lawsuit against the Real Deal, a real estate trade publication, when it reported on the allegations. Five hundred million dollars. The lawsuit wasn't ultimately going to succeed, But that wasn't really the point, was it. The point was the message it sent. We have lawyers, we have money, we have the means to make your life very uncomfortable. Do you want to keep talking?

6:31 Some women stopped talking. Some couldn't be stopped. The first civil lawsuit started arriving in twenty twenty four, and when they did, more women came forward, and then more and federal prosecutors in New York began paying attention. On an early December morning in twenty twenty four, tal Orn and Aylon Alexander were arrested at their waterfront properties in Miami. They went from Billionaire's Row to Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center. They have been held without bail ever since. Their attorney's argument for bail in a hearing that December denied. Jury selection began January twentieth, twenty twenty six. The trial commenced January twenty sixth in the Southern District of New York before Judge Valerie E. Caproni, and from the first day of opening statements, prosecutors made clear exactly what kind of case this was going to be. Assistant US attorney Madison Smiser told the jury the brothers used whatever means necessary, sometimes drugs, sometimes alcohol, sometimes brute force to carry out their rapes. The defense's response, these brothers were womanizers, they were playboys. They were perhaps obnoxious and inappropriate, but they were not criminals. Every encounter was consensual. Every woman who testified was either misremembering or lying or motivated by money.

7:55 Five weeks later, the jury had a different view. We'll get into the trial after the break, but first I want to say something about the architecture of this case, because it's something that matters beyond these three men. This is a case that started with rumors, then whispers, then civil lawsuits that the defendants immediately tried to suppress with legal firepower. The criminal case only opened because enough women refused to be silenced long enough for federal prosecutors to build one. That is not a coincidence. That is a system working the way powerful men count on it to work. And the reason we should care about how the Alexander brothers operated beyond the specific horror of what they did to specific women, is because this playbook is not theirs alone.

8:39 The lifestyle as a lure, the access as the weapon, the legal threats as the silencer, the industry that looks the other way because the money is too good and the whispers are too inconvenient. Someone should have said something. A lot of someone's years earlier will be right back coming up. The testimony that put three brothers away, a woman who woke up naked with Aileen Alexander standing over her, a seventeen year old girl on a ski trip in Aspen, a two thousand and nine video that Orin Alexander filmed himself. And a blog post with a title, I am going to read to you exactly as written because the jury needed to hear it, and so do you. Welcome back to Daily Crime and Justice. I'm Garrett Fischer. Five weeks, eleven women who testified, more than thirty total witnesses, an eight hour deliberation. Let me walk you through what the jury heard. The government's case rested on three pillars. Testimony from women who said they were assaulted, electronic evidence that the brothers themselves created, and a pattern of conduct so consistent across so many women in so many years that Quinn stop being a plausible explanation. Somewhere around the twentieth victim Let's start with the women. Eleven women took the stand and testified about being sexually assaulted by one or

10:10 more of the Alexander brothers. Eight of them said they believed their drinks had been spiked. The accounts were strikingly similar in structure, even when the locations, the years, and the specific brothers involved differed. Meet the Alexanders at a nightclub, a party, a dating app, accept the invitation to a Hampton's weekend, to a Caribbean cruise, to a ski trip, get handed a drink, and then not a gradual fade out, not the recognizable drift of someone who had too much alcohol, but something sudden and complete, bodies that stop responding, a loss of control, with no precedent in their experience. One woman, who testified under the pseudonym Katie Moore, described a night in New York City. She met the brothers out, was handed a drink, and felt her body start to swear suddenly, not gradually. She told the jury she had never experienced anything like it. She had not been drunk. She woke up naked in a bed with a lawn, Alexander standing over her without any clothes on. She tried to get out of the bed multiple times. He pushed her back down each time. Another woman testified that she met the brothers in twenty twelve at a party at a Manhattan apartment.

11:24 She had almost no interaction with the apartment's host. An actor who was not accused of any wrongdoing and is not relevant to this case, went to a night club later that night and woke up naked with Aileen Alexander standing over her. The pattern was the same, the details were different, the outcome was not. Lindsay Acree is an artist and gallery owner in Brooklyn. She chose to come forward publicly and testify under her own name. She told the jury she was raped by Tal Alexander and a second man at a Hampton's home in the summer of twenty eleven. She said she became so disorberried after drinking less than half a glass of wine that she lost control of her body and then lost the night entirely.

12:07 She is now forty years old. She filed a civil lawsuit last year after the brothers publicly referred to their accusers as gold diggers and con artists. She told the jury, if there's a kid with a stick who keeps hitting people, you take their stick away. Money is their sticks, so you take it away so they can't hurt people anymore. That line hit the courtroom like a verdict. Before the verdict, one of the most significant testimonies came from a woman who said she was seventeen years old when she was assaulted. She was on a ski trip in Aspen, Colorado, in twenty seventeen. She told the jury she is the daughter of a billionaire. She is not here for money. She made that point directly. I don't want their money. I just don't want them to have it. She was seventeen.

12:53 All On in Tell Alexander were both convicted, specifically of sex trafficking of a minor in connection with conduct and a minor victim. The testimony was graphic and devastating, but the electronic evidence may have been even more damaging because it was the brother's own words and actions on record. Prosecutors introduced text messages and emails in which the brothers discussed their sexual encounters in terms that went well beyond obnoxious. They discussed in writing the effects of various substances on women's inhibitions. They seemed at times to be bragging, not just about conquest but about method. And then there was the blog. The Alexander brothers at some point maintained a blog, a blog with posts, and one of those posts, introduced into evidence at a federal sex trafficking trial in Manhattan, carried the title It's not rape if you use her tears as lube. Another post was titled it's not rape if she secretly wants it. I'm going to let that sit for a moment. These are not private diary entries.

14:03 These are not messages between the brothers that got subpoenaed. These were blog posts published with titles, which tells you something about how these men understood themselves, their actions, and the likelihood that anyone would ever hold them accountable for any event. The single most damning piece of evidence may have been a video. When investigators searched Tal Alexander's apartment at four hundred and thirty two Park Avenue in early January twenty twenty five, they found video recordings of alleged sexual assaults. One video, recorded in two thousand and nine shows orin Alexander appearing to sexually assault a woman who is, according to prosecutors, severely intoxicated and incapacitated. The woman in the video did not actively participate, orin can be seen moving her body, Orn recorded it himself, orin Alexander was convicted of sexually exploiting a minor. This additional ch yards relating to the video, orin Alexander filmed himself committing a crime and kept the video, of course he did. Now the defense, Mark Agnifilo represented Orin Alexander, Howard Strebnick represented Alon, Deanna Paul represented Tal. They are experienced, aggressive defense attorneys, and they worked hard. Their core argument never wavered. These were consensual encounters. The accusers had faulty memories, Some were motivated by the prospect of civil lawsuit payouts. The brothers were womanizers, obnoxious, yes, inappropriate perhaps, but criminals, no, Srebnick

15:39 told the jury, and closing, nobody was being assaulted, nobody had been trafficked. Agnephilo suggested that the victims were essentially dissatisfied with their encounters and had transformed that dissatisfaction into allegations. Paul argued that prosecutors were asking jurors to connect dots that really aren't there. And then there was the Epstein argument. During the trial, a release of documents from the Jeffrey Epstein files contained materials that mentioned the Alexander brothers. The defense immediately moved for a mistrial, arguing that the timing and the publicity around the Epstein documents had poisoned the jury. Judge Caproni denied the motion. The trial continued. Prosecutors pushed back hard on the money mode of argument. Inclosing, Assistant US Attorney Andrew Jones reminded jurors that only two of the eleven witnesses who testified even had pending civil lawsuits.

16:34 Both of those women, he noted, are wealthy. They don't need a settlement check. Jones described the brother's conduct as crushing evidence that they masqueraded as party boys when really they were predators, with a specific playbook built around exclusive parties, yacht trips, and luxury travel, and a consistent pattern of assault that followed. The jury began deliberating on a Thursday. By Monday morning, a ximately eight hours of deliberation, they were done. We'll be right back with the verdict and what comes next coming up. All three brothers convicted on every single count. The reaction inside the courtroom the US attorney who said the quiet part out loud about sex trafficking in America. Sentencing is set for August sixth, minimum fifteen years, and we honor the women who stood up and made this possible. Welcome back. I'm Garrett Fisher. Let's finish this. Monday, March ninth, twenty twenty six, Manhattan Federal Court Judge Valerie E. Caproni, presiding the jury had been deliberating since the previous Thursday, eight hours of total deliberation time for a five week trial with thirty plus witnesses and decades of alleged criminal conduct. One of the jurors said afterward, it wasn't easy, but they got there. Or In Alexander guilty on all twelve counts. Alon Alexander guilty

18:08 on all twelve counts. Tal Alexander guilty on all ten counts he faced. Among the charges conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, inducing a person to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity, sex trafficking of a miner, Alan and Tal, aggravated sexual abuse by force or intoxicant alan in Oran, sexual abuse of a physically incapacitated person alan in Oran and Oran Alexander's separate conviction for sexually exploiting a miner. All of it, every count, every charge. In the courtroom orin Alexander shook his head softly as the fore woman read the verdicts, tal put his head down. Their parents sat facing forward. The men, who had spent months arguing that each and every one of the women who accused them was lying, now sat silent as a jury told them we believed the women.

19:07 The defense was not finished. Mark Agnifilo stepped outside the courthouse and said, we believe in our client's innocence, and we're not gonna stop fighting until we prevail, and we believe that we will one day prevail. The Alexander family released a statement through their spokesperson, calling the verdict deeply disappointing and promising to continue fighting every day until justice is done. Appeals are expected. They are in prison now, They will remain in prison through sentencing, which Judge Caproni has scheduled for August sixth, twenty twenty six. Each brother faces a minimum of fifteen years in federal prison. The maximum on the most serious charges is life. US Attorney Jay Clayton, whose office prosecuted the case, issued a statement following the verdict, and I want to read part of what he said because I think it matters. The truth is sex trafficking and other federal sex offenses are present in many walks of life, and we have not done enough to root it out. That's the US attorney for the Southern District of New York saying that, not a defense lawyer trying to create sympathy, not an activist, the top federal prosecutor in one of the most powerful districts in the country acknowledging that the system, his system, has not done enough. It's a remarkable thing to say. It's also true, and it's exactly the thing that needed to be said by someone in a position to say it.

20:38 This case started because women were brave enough to file civil lawsuits when the criminal system had not yet found them. One of the most recent is Tracy Tudor, a real estate agent and television personality who alleges Orin Alexander drugged and assaulted her in a restaurant bathroom during a New York City real estate industry event. She filed her lawsuit the same week the jury returned its verdict. The timing was intentional, She has said, so she watched the verdict come in and then added her name to the public record. More than sixty women told investigators they were raped by one or more of the brothers. Eleven of them testified at trial. I want to take a moment and sit with that math. Sixty women, eleven who testified a decade plus of criminal conduct before a federal indictment was unsealed.

21:25 A five hundred million dollar defamation lawsuit filed by the defendants to intimidate the press, threatening messages sent to at least one victim after an assault warning her to stay silent, a real estate industry that apparently understood what these men were and continued celebrating their sales records anyway. And a jury twelve people who sat through five weeks of testimony and eight hours of deliberation who came back and said, we see it, all of it guilty. I said at the top of today's show that this case is about more than three men being convicted of federal sex crimes, and it is. It's about what it takes to hold powerful people accountable when the system is designed not maliciously but functionally to protect them. Wealth buys lawyers, wealth buys silence.

22:12 Wealth buys the kind of public image that makes he would never do that feel credible to people who don't know any better. The Alexander brothers had all of it, the real estate press profiles, the celebrity clientele, the penthouse address, the lifestyle so aspirational that the invitations themselves felt like validation. And they used all of it deliberately for more than a decade on more than sixty women. Let me say some names. Lindsay Acree is an artist and gallery owner in Brooklyn. She is forty years old. She was twenty five years old the summer tal Alexander raped her at a house in the Hamptons after she lost control of her body following less than half a glass of wine.

22:57 She has carried that for fifteen years. She stood up in federal court and told a jury exactly what happened. Her name is Lindsey Aakree. The woman who was seventeen years old and aspen in twenty seventeen, testified under her own identity in that courtroom. I am not using her name here because she has not chosen to make it fully public. But she was seventeen years old. She is twenty six now, she should have been able to take a ski trip without being raped by men a decade older than her, who knew exactly what they were doing and counted on her silence. There are more than sixty women in this case. Most of them will never be named in a podcast episode or a news article. Some of them have lawsuits pending. Some of them have been quietly carrying this for ten, twelve, fifteen years. Every one of them deserves to have the jury's verdict mean something it does. Sentencing is August sixth, twenty twenty six. Minimum fifteen years in federal prison. The brothers have said they will appeal. That is their right. The verdict stands. Garrett Fisher, This is Daily Crime and Justice. We're back tomorrow. Daily Crime and Justice is an entertainment podcast. We research our stories using publicly available sources, news outlets, court records, tabloids, and yes, the Internet, which is occasionally wrong. We also use AI assisted research tools, which means we work fast,

24:27 but we are not infallible. We try hard to get things right. Sometimes we won't. If we make an error, we'll correct it. We are not lawyers, investigators, or the court of record. We're storytellers. Covering cases that matter. Nothing on this show should be taken as legal fact or used in your own legal proceedings. Treat it like what it is. Quality entertainment about real events, consumed responsibly.