Federal probation officials have recommended 180-year prison sentences for Alon and Tal Alexander and 195 years for their brother Oren, according to a newly filed defense sentencing memorandum. Adding those terms to their current ages would put Alon, 39, at 219; Tal, 40, at 220; and Oren, 39, at 234. All three would die long before completing them.
Their lawyers are asking for 15 years each.
The recommendations are disclosed in a 155-page joint sentencing memorandum filed October 13 in Manhattan federal court, ahead of the brothers’ scheduled October 27 sentencing before U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni. The defense calls the proposed terms “cruel, unprecedented, unprincipled” and argues that they go far beyond what is necessary to punish the brothers or protect the public.
The numbers are probation’s recommendations as described by the defense, not sentences Caproni has imposed. The memorandum challenges both the calculations behind them and the justification for prison terms that would extend well beyond the brothers’ lifetimes.
The brothers were convicted on March 9 of multiple federal sex offenses, including conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. Eleven women testified during the trial that one or more of the brothers sexually abused them. Oren and Tal were prominent luxury real-estate brokers who co-founded Official. Alon worked as an executive at a private security company.
After the verdict, then Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said the evidence and testimony showed that the brothers conspired to repeatedly lure, drug and rape young women. In a statement announcing the convictions, he called their conduct “chilling, reprehensible, and unacceptable” and praised the women who testified.
The defense memorandum does not concede the crimes. It says the brothers “steadfastly maintain their complete innocence” and continues to deny rape, sexual assault and secretly administering drugs to women. Their request for 15 years is a sentencing argument made despite those denials, with the jury’s convictions standing against them.
Much of the fight over the recommended punishment concerns the scope of the conspiracy and how additional allegations should affect each brother’s sentence.
According to the filing, probation divided the conduct into 13 sentencing groups for Oren, 12 for Alon and 11 for Tal. The defense argues that only three groups should count for Oren and Alon, and four for Tal. Its position is that probation attributed additional sex-trafficking conduct to the brothers that the jury did not specifically find each defendant committed.
The lawyers challenge the reliability of some of those allegations and argue that the conspiracy verdict does not establish every act probation included in its analysis. They identify that treatment of the conspiracy as a driving force behind the 180- and 195-year recommendations. They also dispute sentencing increases involving vulnerable victims, force, physical restraint and computer use.
Caproni will have to weigh those objections when determining the appropriate sentences. Probation officers investigate defendants’ backgrounds and offenses and recommend punishment to the court, but the judge makes the sentencing decision. Federal law requires a sentence sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to meet the purposes of punishment, deterrence, public safety and rehabilitation.
The defense argues that 15 years would satisfy those requirements. It describes that term as the minimum permitted by certain statutes under which the brothers were convicted, while stressing that it would still mean a prolonged separation from their families.
All three have young children. The memorandum devotes substantial space to their roles as fathers and the effect their imprisonment has had on their households. The lawyers argue that a 15-year term would already cost the brothers much of their children’s childhoods. They also contend that family responsibilities and changes in the brothers’ lives before their arrests make further offending unlikely.
The brothers have been held at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center since their arrests in December 2024. Their lawyers insist that the years they seek should not be mistaken for a light punishment.
“A fifteen-year sentence is a frightfully long and serious sentence,” they write.
Whether Caproni accepts that argument will be determined at sentencing. The punishment probation has proposed, as the defense describes it, would leave none of the three brothers alive to complete his term.
Good