Ohad Fisherman is suing four media outlets over their coverage of his arrest, and he’s not pulling any punches. The complaint was filed March 13 in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court, accusing the Miami Herald, The Real Deal, Local 10 News, and WSVN 7 News of deliberately and falsely tying him to the sex trafficking case against Alon, Oren, and Tal Alexander. Fisherman says the damage to his name and business has been enormous, and he wants the outlets to answer for it.
The heart of his case is a key distinction the media mostly glossed over. Fisherman was hit with just one charge, a single count of sexual battery from the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office over an alleged 2016 incident. That charge was later dropped. The Alexanders, by contrast, got slammed with a sweeping federal sex trafficking indictment and were convicted last week. Fisherman says the outlets knew the difference but buried it anyway, shoving him into the middle of the bigger, uglier story because it made for better headlines. The lawsuit calls that choice “actual malice,” the legal standard you have to prove for defamation when the person is a public figure.
