Alexanders in Federal Custody on Sex Trafficking Charges

The federal proceedings against the Alexander brothers are taking shape.

Oren and Alon Alexander had their first appearances in federal court on Friday and will have their bond hearings on Dec. 30.

The three brothers, including their older brother Tal, will remain in federal custody for the time being. Judge Ellen Frances D’Angelo set pre-trial detention hearings, where a judge will decide whether to let the twin brothers out on bond, for Oren and Alon for Dec. 30.

Criminal defense attorney Howard Srebnick is representing Alon, while Joel Denaro is representing Oren. Srebnick was also added to Tal Alexander’s legal team. Srebnick and Denaro requested the detention hearings be set for that date. Angela Benoit, a trial attorney at the Department of Justice, did not object.

All three brothers have been in custody since their arrests in Miami on Dec. 11. Oren and Alon are also facing state charges of sexual battery, which is why they were being held at Miami-Dade detention centers. They’re now all at the federal detention center in downtown Miami.

A federal judge last week ordered that Tal remain in federal custody, denying him bail. His attorneys have requested that the judge reconsider and offered “any amount” secured by the entirety of his and his family’s assets. The judge on Friday denied the motion seeking to reopen the detention hearing, leaving him in jail.

Oren, Alon and Tal were charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, according to an indictment unsealed last week by the Southern District of New York. Prosecutors allege the brothers raped and sexually assaulted more than a dozen women spanning over a decade. All three brothers have denied the allegations.

At Tal’s hearing last week, Judge Lisette Reid agreed with prosecutors that he should be transferred to New York and held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, joining rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs and former cryptocurrency executive Sam Bankman-Fried.

A Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge granted Oren and Alon’s request for release on house arrest, but they will not be let out before their trial unless a federal judge grants them bail. In Florida, the Miami-Dade State Attorney also charged Ohad Fisherman, a family friend of the Alexanders, with one count of sexual battery. Prosecutors allege Fisherman held down a woman while Oren and Alon raped her in an alleged incident in 2016. Fisherman turned himself in this week; he was on his honeymoon in Japan when an arrest warrant was issued for him.

Sheridan Wall contributed reporting.