Prosecutors questioned their second witness in the Alexander brothers’ federal sex trafficking case on day two of what’s expected to be a monthlong trial.
Oren, Tal and Alon Alexander face 12 counts tied to the sex trafficking conspiracy the government is alleging, which prosecutors say spanned from 2008 to 2021 and involved the brothers drugging and sexually assaulting women, including women who were minors at the time. The brothers have denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In the Lower Manhattan courtroom on Wednesday were the Alexanders’ parents, Orly and Shlomy, their oldest brother Niv and his wife, Cassie Arison, Alon’s wife Shani and others in the Alexander family orbit. Oren and Alon’s defense attorneys in the pending sexual battery case in Miami-Dade County, Joel Denaro and Ed O’Donnell, also attended.
Cross-examination carried over from day one
Defense attorneys also finished cross-examining the prosecution’s first witness, Katie Moore, who first took the stand the day before, and both sides also questioned a friend, who she confided in about the attack at the time.
Howard Srebnick, an attorney for Alon, pressed her on the timing of the evening she alleges Alon raped her. He focused their cross-examination on why Moore did not report her alleged rape to law enforcement and her drug and alcohol use.
Srebnick repeatedly asked Moore about her experience being “blackout” drunk before the evening where she met the Alexander brothers. Moore said the sudden feeling she recalled after accepting a drink from someone in the group at the now-shuttered club Provocateur differed from a gradual fadeout after alcohol intoxication.
Srebnick asked if she could still walk and talk after taking sips from the drink. “You didn’t collapse and require medical attention, correct?” he asked Moore.
“I didn’t collapse requiring medical attention, but I was confused. It felt like the descent of me losing control of my body had begun,” she said.
Moore told the court Monday she did a “little bit of Molly (MDMA)” while at a party with the brothers earlier that evening, but didn’t experience a high as she came to understand it in an experience seven years later. Srebnick examined screenshots from Facebook Messenger displayed to the court showing what she shared with her boyfriend at the time and at least two friends over the following weekend, including where she apparently declined to tell one friend she had taken MDMA that evening.
A new witness alleges 2014 attack
The second woman to take the stand testified under the pseudonym Maya Miller to describe being raped by Tal Alexander at a Hamptons house in August 2014. Miller’s account was included in the November indictment filed by prosecutors.
Miller, who was living in another state, said she met Tal on Instagram the previous year. In emails from his Douglas Elliman email address, he invited her and a friend to the Hamptons the following summer. Tal said he would reimburse her for her flight to New York, but he never did, according to Miller.
He added Miller and one of her friends to a chain with his friend, real estate entrepreneur Steven Ostad, who arranged a private car to pick them up from the airport to take them to his parents’ unit at the Sherry Netherland Hotel on the Upper East Side.
After the women arrived in the city and went with Tal and friends to a bar, he instead took them to his apartment, where they stayed one night before taking a seaplane to the Hamptons.
Miller said she noticed a shift in Tal’s demeanor on the third night of the weekend they spent in a massive Sag Harbor house, when he turned from dismissive to “intensely focused” on her and her friend. While at the house, Tal poured her a shot, which Miller poured down the drain when he wasn’t looking, and handed her friend a glass of wine. She said she wasn’t a big drinker but didn’t want to seem like a “party pooper.”
Shortly after finishing half of the glass, Miller said her friend began slurring her words and stumbled outside the home’s doors to the backyard. She took her friend back to their room, which did not lock, and got her into bed.
Miller said she piled luggage to block the door before falling asleep. She was woken up when Tal came in, jumped on the bed and asked if she had been drinking, which she said she had. He left shortly after she told him she was going to sleep. But she said she was too nervous to sleep, and piled the luggage in front of the door. A couple of hours later, two men, one of whom she said was Tal, entered the room. When Miller asked them, “Can I help you,” she heard one of them say, “Oh shit,” before they left, Miller recounted on the stand.
Early the next morning, they were packing to leave when Tal came into their room. Miller said Tal, upset she was leaving, tackled her onto the bed, and she pushed him off. But his demeanor shifted, and he became angry. He chased her into the bathroom, where she says he cornered her in the shower and raped her.
She says she tried to scream but couldn’t raise her voice and instead whispered “no, no, no.” As he left her crying in the shower, he said, “You wanted that, it’s OK, I care about you, you wanted that,” Miller claims.
She and her friend ordered a car to pick them up and take them back to the city.
“The look he gave me, and what he did to me, put a lot of fear into me,” said Miller, who characterized the attack as Tal exercising “pure control.”
Miller and her friend stayed in New York for two more days, sightseeing. Prosecutors presented text messages between Miller and Tal after the alleged rape, where she pretended to have had a great time in the city.
Miller and Moore are the first two alleged victims to testify in the highly anticipated trial. They both reported their alleged attacks via the FBI hotline in December 2024, when the brothers were arrested in Miami. Neither woman is suing the Alexander brothers.
“I’m 34 years old now, and I know who I am and I want someone held accountable for what was done to me,” Miller said.
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