In court last week, Judge Valerie Caproni reviewed the arguments and requests of disgraced brokers Oren and Tal, along with brother Alon, including charging Oren and Alon on a new indictment. The brothers will be back in court on Tuesday, January 20 for jury selection, with the opening statements of their trial set to begin on January 26.
On Monday morning, U.S. marshals led the Alexanders, dressed 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 what names. Shortly after Caproni arrived in court, however, prosecutors requested that she seal the courtroom to protect the victims’ identities. Members of the press, including The real deal, New York Times and ABC were asked to leave.
Before kicking out reporters and members of the public, Caproni mentioned for the first time that prosecutors had issued a fifth superseding indictment, bringing the total number of charges against one or more of the brothers to twelve. 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 disability in connection with an alleged attack on a Bahamian-flagged cruise ship in 2012. The new count alleges 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 Tuesday for their final pretrial conference, with one of Oren’s attorneys, Zach Intrater, pushing back on the additional charge, arguing that prosecutors attaching two charges to the same incident “leads us to believe that the government does not know what really happened.”
The defense included their position in a motion to dismiss the count, which also argued that prosecutors failed to use the exact language of the criminal law in the indictment. Caproni denied the motion Thursday.
All three brothers have repeatedly denied the charges and have pleaded not guilty.
At a hearing in November, Alon’s attorney, Howard Srebnick, argued that Alon’s 2019 engagement to his current wife, Shani Zigron Alexander, marked his official withdrawal from the alleged conspiracy, or as Srebnick described it, the end of the “single life” he had lived with his brothers.
Srebnick further claimed that because the conspiracy charge has a five-year statute of limitations, Alon’s withdrawal in 2019 would mean he was charged outside that window and therefore should be acquitted of the conspiracy charge.
However, in a decision filed Monday, Caproni rejected Alon’s bid, arguing that Alon’s engagement was merely a sign to his brothers that he decided to get married, and not that he would no longer participate in or help his brothers participate in the “sex trafficking scheme” alleged by prosecutors.
‘Even if you could say that the defendant’s statements indicate his intention that ‘himself’ [would] monogamous’, it is an extraordinary (and unfounded) step to infer from his pre-marriage statements that ‘he also intended to stop helping his brothers’ [with] their activities with women,” Caproni wrote in the decision.
The brothers also face several civil lawsuits alleging drugging and sexual assault, 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 October 31, 2025.
A spokesman for the Alexanders, Juda Engelmayer, said the brothers learned of Whiteman’s death through media reports and added that “the decision to publicly release this information on the eve of the trial raises obvious questions.”
After the Times published the story about Whiteman’s death, members of Alexanders’ defense team contacted New South Wales police. A spokesperson for the region’s coroner’s office later confirmed that police had completed their investigation into 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 most expensive deal to hit the city records this week was a penthouse at 25 Columbus Circle, previously owned by billionaire developer Stephen Ross. The condo, No. PH80, sold for $50.7 million in an off-market deal between a seller and a buyer whose identity was shielded by LLCs.
The full-floor unit traded for $11 million more than its last sales price in 2023, when Ross sold 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 were featured.
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