The Alexander brothers made their final appearances in federal court before their sex trafficking trial is officially underway.
Judge Valerie Caproni waded through the arguments and requests by disgraced brokers Oren and Tal, along with brother Alon, in court last week, including arraigning Oren and Alon on a new charge. The brothers will be back in the courtroom on Tuesday, Jan. 20 for jury selection, with the opening statements of their trial scheduled to begin on Jan. 26.
On Monday morning, U.S. marshals led the Alexanders, clad in khaki uniforms, into a Downtown Manhattan courtroom for what was supposed to be a public hearing discussing which alleged victims would testify at the upcoming trial and under which names. However, shortly after Caproni took the bench, prosecutors requested that she seal the courtroom to protect the identities of victims. Members of the press, including The Real Deal, New York Times and ABC, were asked to leave.
Before kicking reporters and members of the public out, Caproni mentioned for the first time that prosecutors had issued a fifth superseding indictment, which brought the total number of charges against one or more of the brothers to 12. Prosecutors allege the brothers participated in a sex trafficking conspiracy between 2008 and 2021.
The latest addition charges Oren and Alon with sexual abuse by physical incapacitation related to an alleged attack on a cruise ship bearing a Bahamian flag in 2012. The new count is related to the same incident and victim already described in a count in the indictment accusing the twins of aggravated sexual abuse by force, threat or intoxication.
The Alexanders returned to the courtroom on Tuesday for their last pre-trial conference, during which one of Oren’s attorneys, Zach Intrater, pushed back on the added charge, arguing that prosecutors attaching two charges to the same incident “leads us to believe that the government doesn’t know what actually happened.”
The defense included their position in a motion to dismiss the count, which also argued prosecutors failed to use the exact language of the criminal statute in the indictment. Caproni denied the motion on Thursday.
All three brothers have repeatedly denied the allegations and have pleaded not guilty.
At a hearing in November, Alon’s attorney, Howard Srebnick, argued that Alon’s 2019 engagement to his now wife, Shani Zigron Alexander, marked his official withdrawal from the alleged conspiracy, or as Srebnick described it, the end of the “single life” he’d been living with his brothers.
Srebnick further claimed that because the conspiracy charge has a five-year statute of limitations, Alon’s withdrawal from it in 2019 would mean that he was charged outside of that window and should therefore be acquitted from the conspiracy count.
However, in a decision filed Monday, Caproni rejected Alon’s bid, arguing instead that Alon’s engagement only signaled to his brothers his decision to get married, not that he would no longer participate in or help his brothers participate in the “sex trafficking scheme” alleged by prosecutors.
“Even if it could be said that Defendant’s proffered statements indicate his intent that ‘he himself [would] be monogamous,’ it is an extraordinary (and unsupported) leap to infer from his pre-marital statements that ‘he also intended to stop assisting his brothers [with] their activities with women,” Caproni wrote in the decision.
The brothers are also facing several civil lawsuits over drugging and sexual assault allegations, some of which have been dismissed. Kate Whiteman, one of the first two women to accuse Oren and Alon of rape, was found dead near Sydney, Australia late last year, the New York Times reported earlier this week. Whiteman alleged in a lawsuit that the twins raped her during a party in the Hamptons in 2012.
Her death was reported to the New South Wales coroner’s office in Australia on Oct. 31, 2025.
A spokesperson for the Alexanders, Juda Engelmayer, said the brothers learned of Whiteman’s death from media reports and added that “the decision to release this information publicly on the eve of the trial invites obvious questions.”
After the Times published the story on Whiteman’s death, members of the Alexanders’ defense team reached out to the New South Wales police. A spokesperson for the region’s coroner’s office later confirmed the police had finished investigating Whiteman’s death and found the circumstances surrounding it to be “non-suspicious.” The cause of death remains unclear.
NYC Deal of the Week
The priciest deal to land in city records this week was a penthouse at 25 Columbus Circle, which was previously owned by billionaire developer Stephen Ross. The apartment, No. PH80, sold for $50.7 million in an off-market deal between a seller and a buyer whose identities were shielded by LLCs.
The full-floor unit traded for $11 million more than its last sale price in 2023, when Ross offloaded it. The 8,200-square-foot home has five bedrooms, six bathrooms and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park.
Elizabeth Sample and Brenda Powers of Sotheby’s International had the listing.
