Dating back to high school FFS! Even Trump is jealous!!
With a knack for brokering luxury properties, Tal and Oren Alexander, brothers who worked as real estate agents, rose as high as the New York City penthouses they sold. They built an image as jet-setting bachelors, filling their social media feeds with photos from Wimbledon, Art Basel and the beach in Mykonos. They took calls in between ice baths after sessions with their personal trainers. Their traditional good looks and magnetism attracted ultrarich clients who propelled the brothers past thousands of other agents to the very top of the ranks at Douglas Elliman, one of the largest real estate brokerages in the country.
But as the brothers partied and sold co-ops and condos from Manhattan to Miami, they were quietly earning another reputation: Accusations that they drugged and sexually assaulted women were spreading throughout the world of high-end real estate.
Still, Tal and Oren continued to climb. They secured rarefied status in 2019 when they helped broker the sale of a nearly $240 million penthouse — at the time, the most expensive residential sale in United States history. By 2022, they had co-founded their own real estate brokerage, Official. Then in June, their reign as real estate princes ended. What had long been shared among brokers finally spilled into public view. Two women sued Oren, 37, for assault, along with his twin, Alon Alexander, 37, who did not work in real estate but frequently socialized with his brothers. A third woman sued the twins as well as their older brother, Tal, 38. The brothers have denied all allegations of sexual assault, but Tal and Oren resigned from their own company.
Over the past two months, The New York Times interviewed 10 women who said they were sexually assaulted by the brothers, or believe they may have been. Some of them were speaking for the first time, including Tracy Tutor, a top broker at Douglas Elliman Beverly Hills and one of the stars of the reality TV show “Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles.” Seven of the women said they believe they had been drugged, describing a fog that erased or clouded their memory.
“I am still struggling to remember the details,” said Ms. Tutor, 48. She said she shared a drink with Oren Alexander at a cocktail party in 2014 and then blacked out. “Staying silent for so long has been damaging on many levels, and remembering now what happened feels debilitating.” Dozens of former classmates, brokerage employees and agents told The Times that they had knowledge of drugging and violent sexual assault by the brothers, dating back at least 20 years to when the men were high school students.
Leaders at Douglas Elliman were aware of allegations that Tal and Oren may have been drugging women, yet the brokerage continued to support the duo, said five real estate professionals who either told executives about incidents or were told about them by company executives. When the brothers were starting their own agency, real estate professionals tried to dissuade Side, a brokerage, from backing Tal and Oren. But Side partnered with them anyway, according to interviews with three real estate professionals who said they had spoken with Side executives about the brothers.
In a statement, Stephen Larkin, a spokesman for Douglas Elliman, said an incident had been raised casually and confidentially to the chief executive, rather than in the form of an official H.R. complaint. “Had any such complaints been received, those complaints would have been thoroughly investigated,” he said. The statement did not address a second allegation raised by The Times.