Faced with allegations they drugged and raped women over the course of more than a decade across state lines and abroad, brothers Oren, Tal and Alon assembled a high-profile team of criminal defense attorneys, a crisis public relations specialist and other behind-the-scenes associates in bids to control their image and pursue their accusers.
That machine has kicked into high gear in the weeks leading up to their trial, which is set to begin Monday, Jan. 26, in New York, where they have been held in jail for more than a year. Along with an aggressive media approach, the defense has been accused of crossing the line with accusers and potential witnesses.
But the recent developments come a year and a half after the brothers began to construct their defense strategy. In the summer of 2024, they were looking to take action on the wave of accusations that would culminate into federal charges.
Everett Stern, a whistleblower known for exposing an HSBC money laundering scandal, said after a raft of civil lawsuits and media reports surfaced that year, the Alexanders were looking to smear the accusers’ reputations and try to discredit them “in any way possible.”
Stern said he met with Oren and Alon early last year after he reached out to Oren on behalf of his private intelligence service. In his interaction with the family, which he also described on social media, he said he was asked by one of their associates, “if you find out they’re guilty, will you blow the whistle on the family?” He said yes. Stern told TRD he decided not to pursue work for the brothers once he learned more about the allegations.
Stern said the family had apparently retained a firm and were gathering intelligence on women who had accused the brothers of sexual assault and rape in lawsuits and media reports. Around this time, the Alexanders hired Guidepost Solutions in civil litigation, according to a filing in their lawsuit against Side, the white-label firm that backed Oren and Tal’s brokerage.
“They were digging up dirt,” Stern said.
The brothers’ efforts were partially revealed in December 2024. Prosecutors said in announcing charges against the brothers that Alon, while working as an executive with the family’s Miami-based private security firm Kent Security, had begun compiling files on women who had made their allegations public, along with some who hadn’t come forward with accusations, to discredit them.
Going on the offensive
Prosecutors and attorneys for some of the alleged victims in the case have alleged in court filings that some of the women have been harassed by people working for the Alexanders.
A woman identified in the indictment as “Victim 1” accused the brothers of a harassment campaign ahead of the trial. In a January filing, she claimed an “investigator” hired by the Alexanders misrepresented his identity when he reached out to her friends, telling them instead that he worked on behalf of other alleged victims of the brothers, according to court documents. She also alleged that a member of the defense team contacted her friends and claimed to be a reporter.
Prosecutors outlined similar claims raised by a woman identified as “Victim 4” in a letter to Judge Valerie Caproni, alleging they learned in December that a woman had been posing as an insurance company employee while speaking to Victim 4’s neighbors and had asked questions about Victim 4’s minor children.
Attorneys for the Alexanders told prosecutors that they had not authorized investigators to lie about their identities or ask about victims’ children and were unaware of anyone doing so, according to the letter.
Federal agents later approached the woman, who is on the defense’s witness list. She told them she was hired by the defense and acknowledged that she had asked questions about Victim 4’s children.
Caproni and Oren’s attorney, Marc Agnifilo, appeared to address the allegations at a Jan. 12 hearing, attributing the allegations to “subcontractors.” Caproni warned him to ensure the behavior stopped.
Dr. Ann Olivarius, an attorney who has represented survivors of sexual abuse, said allegations of victim harassment are common in cases involving “powerful men accused of systemic abuse.” She pointed to Sean “Diddy” Combs, who prosecutors accused of instructing his family members to contact potential witnesses while he was in custody ahead of his federal trial.
“These allegations of harassment are not glitches in the system; they are a standard feature of the wealth defense playbook,” Olivarius said. “This is the tax on justice for victims of powerful men. You don’t just have to survive the assault; you have to survive the investigation too.”
As for the allegations about the defense’s investigators misrepresenting their identities, Olivarius said the law allows lawyers to investigate prospective witnesses, though it prohibits them — and by extension, their contractors — from using deception to do so.
However, she said the line between what is considered illegal and what is just unethical is often blurred. She referenced Harvey Weinstein’s attorney, David Boies, who helped the disgraced Hollywood producer strike a deal with private intelligence firm Black Cube to investigate reporters and accusers ahead of the publication of bombshell stories from the New York Times and New Yorker detailing his alleged sexual misconduct.
During Weinstein’s 2020 rape trial, New York prosecutors claimed Black Cube’s investigators lied about their identities to journalists and alleged victims. But Boies avoided formal discipline after downplaying his role in Weinstein’s dealings with Black Cube and arguing he didn’t direct the firm or its investigators to lie.
“Outsourcing ethics violations to private firms doesn’t make it right, but it does make it harder to police,” Olivarius said.
A shadow over the trial
The Alexanders’ previous efforts to discredit one of the first women to file a lawsuit accusing Oren and Alon of rape resurfaced this month, when it was reported she had been found dead in late 2025.
The death of Kate Whiteman, one of the first two women to publicly accuse the Alexanders of rape, was reported by Australian police in late October, but it had not been known publicly until a New York Times report published less than two weeks before the trial was set to begin.
No foul play is suspected, according to Australian authorities.
But Juda Engelmayer, a spokesperson for the Alexanders, said in a statement that they learned of Whiteman’s death from the outlet’s report.
“The decision to release this information publicly on the eve of trial invites obvious questions,” he said.
The development came after the Alexanders’ team worked to discredit Whiteman’s reputation and credibility by providing the Daily Mail with messages and nude photos Whiteman sent to Oren. These messages were also included in the brothers’ lawsuit against The Real Deal, which accused TRD of defamation after excluding the materials later published in other outlets.
TRD publisher Amir Korangy told the New York Times that the materials were provided off the record and that they “didn’t prove they did not assault her.” He added that the messages “didn’t merit us not doing a story on the accusations.”
The Alexanders’ strategy is not a new one. Olivarius said the use of intimate photos and private texts to defend against claims of rape and sexual assault has become “the industry standard for destroying a woman’s credibility.”
An activist publicist
The key link between the brothers’ legal arguments and the public have been newsletters and blog posts authored by crisis communications strategist Engelmayer. “This case should not have been brought,” reads a recent email signed by Engelmayer to a distribution list labeled “friends of the Alexanders.”
Roughly a year after TRD first reported on rape allegations against the Alexanders, the brothers tapped Engelmayer to head their public relations efforts.
Engelmayer recaps hearings in email newsletters, which focus on arguments such as the government overreaching and the defense’s aim to poke holes in the prosecution’s indictments, including their timelines. The Alexanders’ friends and family received their own version of the newsletters and updates Engelmayer sends to the media.
In a Jan.19 email, Engelmayer wrote that Judge Valerie Caproni, who is overseeing the case, “has sounded more like one of the prosecutors than an objective jurist.”
Engelmayer — dubbed the “pied piper of pariahs” in a New York Times article published days before he announced his employment with the Alexanders — set up his own shop in 2012 and later built a name for himself representing Weinstein. His client roster has since included con artist Anna Delvey, OneTaste founder Nicole Daedone and Combs.
“Working for Harvey put me on the map,” Engelmayer told the Times. “Is that a bad thing to say? I don’t know. It’s the truth.”
The woman known as “Victim 1” also claimed in court documents that a publicist hired by the Alexanders attempted to undermine her credibility by placing opinion pieces highlighting alleged inconsistencies between her accounts to the New York Times, in a civil lawsuit and to prosecutors.
The filing did not name the publicist, but Engelmayer addressed the allegations in the document in his statement.
“I’m not working to ‘sully’ anyone’s name, nor to smear or intimidate any accuser, and I have no knowledge of, nor involvement with, any private investigator,” Engelmayer said. “I’ve never been asked to do any of that.”
When asked why he decided to take on the Alexanders as clients, Engelmayer pointed to what he described as a “profound disconnect between and what exists in the evidentiary record.” He added that he views his role as not to judge his clients’ alleged behavior but to use material in the public record to make sure the narrative around the case “is not one-sided, distorted, or frozen in accusation-only form.”
“That work is defensive, evidence-based, and responsive — not retaliatory,” he said in a statement. “It does not require attacking anyone personally, and I would not participate in that if asked.”
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