An attorney for Alon Alexander made his final pleas to a federal judge Friday morning, requesting he be let out on house arrest.
Criminal defense lawyer Howard Srebnick’s arguments hinged on Alon’s access to properties in Miami and New York — a proposed bail package his twin brother Oren Alexander’s attorneys will likely also use in their push for Oren’s release. Oren, Alon and their older brother Tal are all in federal custody in Miami following their arrest on sex trafficking charges in December.
Srebnick offered a two-bedroom apartment on the eighth floor of a building in Miami-Dade County, with 24/7 private security and camera surveillance, to be paid for by the Alexander family.
“Not a luxury apartment,” Srebnick said.
When the brothers are in New York for their upcoming federal trial, Srebnick made another offer: Tal’s apartment “on a higher floor with no balconies.”
Srebnick told The Real Deal he did not know the address for Tal’s apartment in New York, but Tal, who was denied bail in mid-December, has been renting a unit at 432 Park Avenue, a luxury tower on Billionaires’ Row, since 2019.
Federal magistrate Judge Eduardo Sanchez agreed with prosecutors who argued Alon is a flight risk, ordering that Alon be held in federal custody until and during his trial. Prosecutors previously pushed back against Alon’s request for house arrest, arguing he and his brothers were attempting to “leverage their wealth to receive special treatment.”
Federal law “does not permit a two-tiered bail system in which defendants of lesser means are detained pending trial while wealthy defendants are released to self-funded private jails,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing. “The Defendants here seek to circumvent this basic tenet of justice and buy their way out of jail by hiring guards to watch them inside a luxury condo.”
The court previously rejected a proposal that Tal be placed on house arrest at his parents’ home in Bal Harbour, a waterfront property with access to the Atlantic Ocean, as well as their uncle Gil Neuman’s home in Broward County.
“Risk of flight is really the issue here,” Judge Sanchez said on Friday. Another federal judge denied Tal’s request for release last month, also deeming him a flight risk. “The fact that they’re all facing these charges is enough incentive to flee.”
The Alexanders were indicted by the Southern District of New York in December on federal sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking charges. The charges carry a minimum sentence of 15 years, and up to life in prison.
An FBI agent testified last week that the federal agency has interviewed 42 women who claim they were assaulted by one or more of the brothers. The FBI agent said these women said they had experienced symptoms of being drugged, including drinking a couple of sips of alcohol and feeling “extremely intoxicated” in a way that was inconsistent with how they normally felt.
Oren was set to have his detention and removal hearings on Friday as well, but the judge pushed it to Tuesday, Jan. 7, at his defense attorney Richard Klug’s request. In a motion filed over the weekend, the parties requested that the court hold one hearing on Friday, Jan. 10 to rule on Alon and Tal’s bail appeals, and so the judge can hold Oren’s detention hearing.
Srebnick also opposed Alon’s transfer at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where Tal is set to be detained alongside Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of the United HealthCare CEO, and rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Srebnick argued the conditions at MDC are unsafe. He referenced comments from a judge in the Eastern District of New York last January, which referred to the Sunset Park jail as “dangerous,” “barbaric” and an “ongoing tragedy.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Espinosa said the conditions at MDC “are improving every day.”
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office also charged Oren and Alon with sexual battery. The brothers were granted bail and house arrest with ankle monitors by a district court judge, but they won’t be released unless a federal judge allows it.
The Alexanders are also facing a number of civil lawsuits alleging they drugged and sexually assaulted women. On Monday, a woman sued Alon and Oren, alleging she was drugged and raped by Alon in an attack that Oren allegedly participated in when she was 17 years old. The alleged incident occurred in 2017, the same year Alon met his wife, Shani Alexander.
Also in December, another woman, Samantha Fields, sued Oren and Tal, alleging that they sexually assaulted her in separate attacks in 2011 and 2016.
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