For catwalk model Shani Zigron, the five-week trial of her husband and his two brothers in America’s most horrifying sex crime case for years had been an exercise in poised and perfect loyalty.
Inside a pink diary she carried to court, the final days of February had been blocked out with hollow, child-like bubble letters spelling out a simple message: ‘Alon coming home now.’
When the New York sex-trafficking trial of wealthy celebrity estate agents Oren, 38, and Tal Alexander, 39, and their brother Alon (Shani’s husband and Oren’s twin) started, they and their family – who turned out in force at court – seemed confident.
The relatives chatted with each other and exchanged grins with the accused.
For their part, the playboy brothers – whose immense self-confidence took them to the top of their industry, selling and buying homes for clients such as Ivanka Trump, Liam Gallagher, Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian and Kanye West – flashed dazzling smiles as they strode into court, offering thumbs-ups and heart signals to supporters seated behind them.
However, the easy air of the Alexander clan noticeably dissipated as the weeks passed and the court heard graphic testimony from 11 of the more than 60 women who have accused them of using their wealth and fame to entrap, drug and then rape or sexually assault them.
The offences – committed in New York, Miami, the luxury ski resort Aspen, The Hamptons and even on a Caribbean cruise – spanned nearly two decades from 2003 to 2021. The harrowing testimony came from women who were as young as 13 when they said they fell prey to the Alexanders, whose terrifying modus operandi was to spike their drinks and then gang rape them.
And when, on Monday evening, the inevitable verdict came – and given the sheer weight of evidence only the Alexander family could have been surprised that the jury found them guilty on all ten charges – it was finally too much for 30-year-old Mrs Alon Alexander.
Tal Alexander and Arielle at a charity gala in 2022. She was entirely absent from court, having filed for divorce in January last year, just a few weeks after the brothers were charged.
A $3,000 Prada bag often slung over her shoulder, the Israeli fashion model had been an almost continual presence at the trial, sitting in the gallery behind her husband and apparently convinced of his innocence as she frequently shook her head angrily during testimony from the accusers.
However, after the jury left the court following the verdict, she glanced toward her shell-shocked husband and placed her head in her hands as she trembled with emotion.
Concealing her face behind a black umbrella as she left, she was soon photographed in a street a few blocks from the federal court in Manhattan, sitting on a step and wiping away tears as a family friend tried to comfort her.
The spouses of the other Alexander brothers, however, were not so steadfast in their support for their husbands.
After the first day of the trial, when she appeared in court wrapped in a large fur Bolero jacket, Brazilian-born model Kamila Hansen – Oren’s wife and Shani’s lookalike – attended the trial only twice more, dropping in for a few hours at a time. Their glitzy 2023 wedding had received a gushing write-up from US Vogue – yet Hansen wasn’t even in court for the verdict.
Meanwhile, Tal’s ex-wife Arielle was entirely absent from court, having filed for divorce in January last year, just a few weeks after the brothers were charged. She ignored his subsequent warnings to ‘think twice’ about the split and that ‘the divorce will be a war’ unless she agreed to do things his way, according to divorce papers.
Such aggressive, controlling behaviour towards women was a key feature of the evidence presented against the Alexanders during their trial.
Victims said the brothers threatened them to ensure their silence, with some women so terrified they believed they might be killed.
The brothers face the prospect of life in prison when they’re sentenced in August. They may appeal, their lawyers have suggested, but they also face more than two dozen civil lawsuits from accusers. Their convictions completed the astonishing downfall for a pair who, even as teenagers, were accused of sexually assaulting some of their fellow high school pupils and sharing video footage of the abuse with their friends.
The sons of Shlomi and Orly Alexander, Israeli-born millionaire property developers and security company owners, the trio were notorious even then for spiking girls’ drinks at school parties and then, while they were barely conscious, subjecting them to gang rape – which they hideously referred to as ‘running a train’.
Oren and his wife Kamila Alexander at an event in New York City in 2023
While Alon, a lawyer, worked as an executive at his parents’ private security company, Tal and Oren rose to become the most successful celebrity estate agents in the US.
The secret to their success, they boasted, was that they enjoyed the same jet-setting, lavish partying lifestyle as their clientele.
In 2018, the pair – who called themselves The A Team and had a reputation for using aggressive and unscrupulous business tactics – helped rap star Kanye West find a $14 million Miami home he bought for his then wife, Kim Kardashian.
The following year, the brothers ‘referred’ the Wests’ new Miami neighbour, billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, to a mansion near Buckingham Palace which he bought for £95 million. It was the priciest home sold in London for nearly a decade.
Just two days after the deal, the Alexanders completed the sale of a Manhattan penthouse to Griffin, one of America’s richest men, for an eye-watering £176 million – making it the most expensive home ever sold in the US. ‘There’s not a person or a client we can’t get to,’ bragged Oren with typical self-assurance. ‘While my nights are late, and some may call me a party boy, it’s all about closing deals.’
Photos they snapped on the private jets and superyachts of their billionaire friends then posted on Instagram and Facebook certainly bore out their claims. ‘You have to be in Saint-Tropez in July, Aspen in the winter, Hong Kong for [the] Art Basel [fair], Cannes for the film festival, Monaco for the Grand Prix,’ Tal told one interviewer.
Even so, the lingering fear remained that their appallingly dark side would come to light – as Oren acknowledged to Tal in a 2021 text message. ‘We are on top of the game,’ he said. ‘Only thing can bring us down is some hoe [whore] complaining.’
His tawdry observation proved all too prescient when, in March 2024, Australian Kate Whiteman became the first woman to publicly accuse the Alexander twins of sexual assault.
She said she’d met Oren and Alon at a Manhattan nightclub in 2012 and they forced her into a car as she was leaving. They drove her to The Hamptons where they assaulted her at a mansion that was notorious for riotous parties.
Her accusations opened the floodgates to allegations and some 60 women went to the police with stories about ordeals at the Alexanders’ hands that were often all too similar. Many said they had been drugged, leaving them unable to fight back or escape and often struggling to remember exactly what was done to them.
Alon Alexander and Shani Zigron at an Alexander Team celebration in 2020
The Alexanders were arrested in December 2024 and vehemently protested their innocence, claiming their accusers were motivated purely by greed and that the sex had always been consensual.
Prosecutors charged the trio with offences that included conspiracy to commit sex trafficking; sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; and inducement to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity.
They said the brothers exploited their wealth to offer ‘the promise of luxury experiences, travel and accommodations to lure and entice women to locations where they were then forcibly raped or sexually assaulted’.
In his closing argument, Assistant US Attorney Andrew Jones said: ‘Not only did they commit these crimes without remorse, they did it with callousness, with a perverse sense of pride.’
One of the Alexanders’ lawyers reminded jurors they were there to decide a criminal case, not judge an ‘a**hole contest’. If it were the latter, she said, ‘this would be easy – case closed’.
The trial made clear they were something far worse. At times, the six women and six men of the jury recoiled in their seats as they were presented with chilling evidence that included a video of an incapacitated 17-year-old being raped.
A key weapon in the prosecution’s armoury turned out to be a blog, titled ‘Vent on B*tches’.
Created in 2008 by a group of friends of Oren and Alon Alexander, it was – said prosecutors – a sort of manifesto for their vile approach to women and sex.
A post titled ‘It’s Not Rape If…’ outlining various supposed caveats to consent, including ‘if she’s sleeping’ while another was ‘if she doesn’t remember’.
The defence insisted it was just locker room talk. Although there was no evidence that the Alexanders necessarily wrote the entries, prosecutors stitched together several blog posts that mirrored the pattern of sexual abuse described by their victims.
According to their accusers, the Alexanders’ attacks were organised with cold efficiency and followed a ‘playbook’: they would approach attractive women in nightclubs, parties and online via social media and dating apps.
Many of them were models or aspiring to be so. The men would then invite them to parties – sometimes offering to pay their flights and hotels – which the women discovered too late were oppressive gatherings of the Alexanders and male friends.
The women believe they were given spiked drinks that would largely incapacitate them as the men led them into a bedroom where they’d be undressed and, if necessary, forcibly pinioned to the bed. Then, they were sexually assaulted or raped by their abusers in turn. Those girls and women who were sufficiently conscious to scream at them to stop say they were ignored. The brothers would frequently watch each other raping their victims or else record it on video, the court heard. ‘There were no words needed or directions said,’ recalled a victim. ‘It was very routine for them.’
The brothers were devoid of human empathy. A 26-year-old model who accused Oren of raping her in his Miami home nine years ago, recalled him telling her in the middle of her ordeal: ‘Stop crying, be quiet, you’re ruining it.’
Another accuser, using the pseudonym Kelly Hudson, claimed she was drugged and violently raped by Oren at his family’s ski lodge in Aspen, Colorado.
Court heard graphic testimony from 11 of the more than 60 women who have accused the brothers of using their wealth to entrap, drug and then rape or sexually assault them
In a final act of degradation, he dressed his barely-conscious victim in a clown costume and threw her out into the bitter December night, laughing as he slammed the door in her face.
When she confronted Oren the next day about what happened, she testified that he told her: ‘Don’t worry about it. We had fun.’
A witness who used the pseudonym Katie Moore testified to the Alexanders’ celebrity connections when she told jurors she first met Alon and Tal in 2012 at a party at the New York home of Hollywood star Zac Efron.
Moore, who was 20 at the time, said Tal Alexander provided her with drinks before they went to a nightclub where she suddenly became unsteady and blacked out. She regained consciousness to find herself naked in Alon’s bed with him, also naked, standing over her.
A tearful Moore said that when she told him she didn’t want to have sex with him, he laughed and replied: ‘You already did.’ She testified that Alon then raped her, during which Tal walked into the room and spoke to his brother without even acknowledging her presence.
Another witness testified that she felt like she was being ‘mauled by wild animals’ during a gang rape by Tal, Alon and two other men. In a WhatsApp conversation from 2016 that was titled ‘Lions in Tulum’, the brothers and other men referred to ‘imports’ of women to a holiday rental in Mexico.
They discussed splitting the costs and which drugs – including the notorious ‘date rape’ drug GHB (gamma hydroxy butyrate) – to give them.
As they fretted over whether the unnamed ‘promoter’ of the trip would find sufficiently attractive women, Oren said: ‘Just warn him ur [sic] boys are hungry.’
Later, expressing shock that each woman’s flights would cost $500, Oren commented: ‘That’s more than most of us ever spent on girls. Just want to make sure we get a good ROI [return on investment].’
It has since emerged that the Alexanders’ behaviour towards women was an open secret in the property business.
‘We all heard rumours but no one could prove anything,’ a female estate agent told the Daily Mail. ‘No one would talk because they have so much money, they would threaten to sue anyone who went against them in business or personally.’
She added: ‘Women realtors hated doing business with them. There was an open secret with the experienced agents that you didn’t go anywhere with them, didn’t travel with them, didn’t be alone with them.’
As the brothers head for long prison sentences, even their wives will no longer have the chance to be left alone with them.
Additional reporting: Luke Kenton
