The third day of the Alexanders’ sex trafficking trial kicked off with the cross-examination of a woman who alleges Tal Alexander raped her in the Hamptons in 2014.
Defense attorneys pressed the woman testifying under the pseudonym Maya Miller, who alleges that while she and a friend were staying in a Hamptons house, Tal followed her to a bathroom, blocked her exit and raped her inside a shower on the other side of a door from her friend. The allegation was included in the November indictment filed by prosecutors.
Prosecutors allege Oren, Tal and Alon engaged in a conspiracy to commit sex trafficking from 2008 to 2021, including drugging and sexually assaulting women. The brothers have denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Milton Williams, a lawyer for Tal, drilled down on Miller’s excitement for what she called a “once-in-a-lifetime trip.” Miller, who met Tal online the previous year, said Tal indicated he would reimburse her for her flight to New York, but he never did. Once in the city, Tal paid for transportation, including taking a seaplane to the Hamptons, her stay in the Hamptons, private dinners and more.
Williams asked Miller if Tal described his wealth during the time they spoke online, between 2013 and 2014. Miller said no, but that she saw images of his lifestyle that he shared on Instagram at the time.
She told the court she fled the house after the attack, cutting their planned weekend short as her friend booked a car to Manhattan, where they stayed for two more days, sightseeing.
Williams pointed to her exit as a sign of her agency that weekend, asking Miller to confirm she “could have come and gone as she pleased,” and she agreed.
Williams listed the places in Manhattan Miller and her friend visited in the two days after the alleged attack and the fact that her friend paid for everything, including high tea at the Plaza hotel and a meal at Serafina.
Marc Agnifilo, one of Oren’s attorneys, pushed Miller on her not telling her friend who accompanied her that weekend that she had allegedly been raped, especially since Miller said she brought the friend as a “safety net.”
“You guys were in the car for two and a half hours and you didn’t say anything?” Agnifilo asked. Miller said she was in shock and processing the alleged attack.
Miller’s text messages to Tal after the alleged rape were presented to the court on Wednesday. She said her enthusiastic responses, which described her time in the city after departing the Hamptons as “fucking amazing,” were her pretending to have had a great time in the city.
“This isn’t a movie. This is real life,” Miller said, adding that she was in “survival mode.”
After the defense attorneys concluded their questions, prosecutors presented an email sent by Tal in August 2014 from his Douglas Elliman account to Alon as Miller was planning her travel to the Hamptons. The message forwarded Miller’s email containing her flight information and a photo of her and her friend.
“See below these cheap hookers coming to the Hamptons this weekend,” Tal said in the email.
A man identified as Miller’s friend also took the stand, recounting how they met in late 2019 and she disclosed the alleged attack the following year, when she stumbled on Tal’s online profile and started crying.
She called him in December 2024 to tell him the brothers had been arrested, after which she contacted an FBI tip line.
Attorneys for the defense questioned him on if he discussed his testimony with Miller in advance, which he said he didn’t.
A question of evidence
Prosecutors on Thursday also called New York Police Department Detective Mark Shackel and David Weissman, senior digital forensic examiner at the FBI in New York.
Shackel described the storage room where he found a blue hard drive and two cassette tapes at Tal’s then-apartment at 432 Park Avenue in Manhattan on Dec. 11, 2024. That’s the same day the three brothers were arrested in Miami.
Weissman said he reviewed “40 or so” items, which included iCloud accounts, phones, USB drives, digital cameras, external hard drives, laptops and desktop computers. Weissman was asked to explain metadata and how the government extracts these devices and accounts.
During Weissman’s testimony, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Jones walked jurors through a series of photos and videos taken on April 16, 2009, which were not shown to the rest of the courtroom. Oren is charged with sexual exploitation of a minor related to a video of an alleged attack in 2009.
Jones also cited an email Oren sent containing a video from that same night.
What’s next
The woman who prosecutors say was raped by Oren when she was 17 years old is expected to testify Monday morning. The allegation was detailed in the November indictment.