By Luc Cohen and David Thomas
High profile real estate agent brothers Alon Alexander, Oren Alexander, and Tal Alexander in New York
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, 38, Tal Alexander, 39, and Alon Alexander, 38, had each pleaded not guilty to all charges they respectively faced in an indictment alleging trafficking and other criminal conduct related to seven victims.
A federal jury in Manhattan convicted the three brothers after deliberations began on Thursday following a months-long trial.
"This verdict cannot undo the effects of 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," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement.
Howard Srebnick, an attorney for Alon Alexander, said in a statement they disagree with the jury's verdict and they plan to appeal. Attorneys for Oren and Tal Alexander did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Oren and Tal Alexander co-founded the luxury real estate brokerage Official, while Alon Alexander was an executive at a private security company.
Tal Alexander faced seven charges in total, and his twin brothers Oren and Alon faced six.
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Over the course of a six-week trial in Manhattan federal court, 11 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," 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 and David Thomas in Chicago; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Rosalba O'Brien and Lincoln Feast.)