For more than a decade, Oren Alexander was one of the biggest names in ultraluxury real estate in Miami and New York City. He helped to broker the record-setting 2019 purchase of a penthouse at 220 Central Park South, a deal closed for nearly $240 million.
The real estate empire that he helped to build in the sky in multimillion-dollar perches of glass and steel in both cities is now crumbling under mounting allegations of violent sexual assault.
Mr. Alexander, 36, was accused in two separate lawsuits filed earlier this year of sexually assaulting two women more than a decade ago. Oren’s identical twin brother, Alon, an executive in a private security firm, is also named as a defendant in both complaints.
The twins are accused of jointly sexually assaulting two women in separate incidents — one woman says she was assaulted at a party mansion in the Hamptons and the other says she was drugged and then assaulted in Manhattan.
On Monday, Isabelle Kirshner, a lawyer for Oren and Alon Alexander, defended the brothers and described the complaints as money grabs in a statement to The New York Times. “It is disappointing [but not surprising] that plaintiffs’ counsel is resorting to their same generic playbook — file similarly fantastical boilerplate claims against supposedly deep-pocketed individuals without regard to the specific facts or truth,” she wrote in the statement. “In fact, our preliminary investigation of the claims has uncovered clear and irrefutable evidence that vindicates the Alexanders, which we look forward to presenting in court.”
Oren Alexander, with his older brother Tal Alexander, made a name for himself in big-money real estate, including with the record-setting penthouse. They co-founded Official, a brokerage that caters to ultrawealthy clients.
The brothers, with Alon nearly always alongside them, were a fixture on the nightlife scenes of Miami and New York, appearing regularly in Page Six dispatches and in a write-up on their weekend routine in The New York Times.
Tal Alexander, 37, is not named in the complaints, but Evan Torgan, founding partner of the firm Torgan Cooper + Aaron, which is representing both women, said that since last week, he has fielded more accusations of sexual assault against all three brothers. “The flood of phone calls and emails is still coming,” Mr. Torgan said.
Tal Alexander declined to comment, but in an email obtained by The New York Times that he sent on Sunday to his co-workers at Official, he addressed the allegations.
“I find the actions described in these news stories to be reprehensible, and I would never act or behave in such a manner. Any allegations to the contrary are simply untrue,” he said in the email. It also said, “I have little doubt that given my close relationship with my brothers, at some juncture, a lawyer or many lawyers will soon try to lump me in with the allegations against Alon and Oren.”
The complaints were filed just before the expiration of a statute of limitations of civil sexual assault cases in New York, and first reported in The Real Deal, a real estate trade publication, earlier this month.
Mr. Torgan said he had met with women who say they were assaulted in New York City and the Hamptons, as well as in Colorado, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Florida. Some of the allegations date back as far as 2004, when Oren and Alon were high school students in Miami.
“A lot of women didn’t come forward right away because a lot of them felt responsible. Some of them were on dates when this happened,” Mr. Torgan said.
Tal and Oren founded the Alexander Team, a division within Douglas Elliman Real Estate, in 2012.
In 2021, one year before they left Elliman to launch their own brokerage, the Alexander Team reported more than $1.8 billion in sales.
They started Official, in 2022, alongside Nicole Oge, a former marketing executive for both Douglas Elliman and WeWork, and two other co-founders. In 2023, the Alexander brothers announced $260 million in closed deals, and were included in the Hollywood Reporter’s 2023 Power Brokers list of top agents in New York City.
In an internal memo sent to Official staff on Friday and shared with The New York Times, Ms. Oge wrote that the brokerage’s values “were deeply violated when the disturbing allegations against our former partner Oren Alexander were uncovered. They run counter to everything we stand for as an organization.”
She added that “Oren was immediately isolated from the business, his licenses were separated, and the process of removing him from ownership is well underway.”
Last week, Oren Alexander announced he was stepping away from his role at Official, and by Friday, his photograph and bio had been removed from the company’s website.
As of Saturday, Official had deactivated his real estates licenses in both Florida and New York and Oren relinquished his minority stake in the company, Ms. Oge confirmed. Emails sent to his Official address received an auto reply that he was no longer affiliated with the brokerage.
Among the reactions from agents and others in the real estate industry were questions of how the allegations took so long to surface. One of the two women who have filed lawsuits accuses both Oren and Alon of assaulting her at Sir Ivan’s Castle, a party mansion in the Southhampton town of Water Mill. The other alleges she was drugged at a Manhattan nightclub and then taken to an apartment in Chelsea where one twin brother forcefully penetrated her while the other held her down. She said they then switched places and the assault continued, according to the lawsuit.
As news of the lawsuits hit social media, comment threads on Reddit and Instagram became filled with messages from other women who said they, too, had been victims. Many encouraged those with similar stories to speak out.
“Plaintiff is not, and was not, the only victim to fall prey to the twins’ heinous acts,” reads the complaint that alleges the assault in the Hamptons. “For years, defendants Alon and Oren have engaged in a similar pattern of schemes, acts, and conduct with different women.”
The second complaint contains similar language.
The brothers have until Aug. 19 to respond to the complaints.The lawyer for the women said he is not aware of any current criminal investigations. The Times reached out to law enforcement in Southampton and New York to inquire whether anyone had filed police reports, but did not get an immediate response.
There was shock among longtime professionals of the real estate industry that the allegations had surfaced. Several agents, appraisers and public relations officials told The New York Times that Official, which is only two years old, would have a hard time recovering from the scandal in such a competitive environment.
“It seems ironic that Official, known for branding high-end luxury real estate developments in New York, Miami and beyond, may find it nearly impossible to maintain control of their own brand,” said Jonathan Miller, president and chief executive of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel. “If the firm is unable to survive the deluge of news coverage of the supposed shocking behavior of a partner, the void will only be temporary. There is too much money involved for the industry not to move on quickly without them.”
In an interview on Sunday, Ms. Oge said her company would keep moving forward.
“The conflation or misconception about Official somehow being inextricably linked to any individual, whether it’s me or Oren or anyone else, is just false,” she said. “Official is not Oren Alexander.”
