Tal and Oren Alexander were on top of the world in 2024. Still in their 30s, they had established their business as brokers for celebrities and billionaires, and they were living the luxury lifestyle they sold. The Real Deal’s Katherine Kallergis had watched and chronicled their rise over a decade on the luxury real estate beat in Miami. She had also heard rumors about Tal, Oren and brother Alon, alleging druggings and sexual assaults. She tried to run them down — many reporters had.
But she felt as if she was chasing shadows. Sources went quiet. Promised documents never materialized. And then there were the brothers, confident, unruffled, untouchable. They admitted to colleagues and friends they had heard the rumors too. They said they were the victims of a shakedown. They assured anybody who asked that there was nothing there. The rumors, they insisted, were absurd. But one day in 2024, Katherine got a phone call and a tip that changed everything.
Turning a tip into an investigation
She tapped editor Ellen Cranley and reporter Sheridan Wall in New York to help run it down. Their efforts would blow the lid off one of the biggest stories of the decade, expose years of violent attacks, devastated lives and industry complicity. The story entered its final act just this past week in a Manhattan courtroom when a judge sentenced the brothers to 30 years in prison. The brothers deny all allegations against them and plan to appeal.
The events that unfolded over the two years that followed that initial tip have had enough twists and turns to fill a book. The Real Deal plans to publish one, providing the inside account of its efforts, along with a definitive reconstruction of all that is known about the Alexander brothers, their victims, the industry figures who enabled them, and the organization’s attempt to make sense of it all. The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming project. Sign up here to receive notifications when the book is available for purchase in spring 2027.
The First Call
Confronting a longtime source with a negative accusation is never easy. Katherine and Sheridan had both done it plenty of times. It is part of the job. But asking someone to respond to rape allegations was an entirely new experience for both of them. As Katherine readied herself to call Oren, Sheridan reached out to Alon. He responded by asking her to contact his lawyer.
But Katherine suspected she would not get off that easily. Oren had always prided himself on his ability to manage the media, and she doubted he would delegate the job in a situation where the stakes were this high. As the clock ticked toward 4 p.m. on that Tuesday, she sat on the couch in her living room staring at her phone in the dim late afternoon light.
She was alone and it seemed really quiet. To prepare, she read through the brief script she had hammered out in case she got flustered: “tell Oren about the lawsuits and that we are working on a story. Explain why we would cover it, if it’s been sitting in the court docket. And ask for a response.” She reminded herself to keep her tone neutral, but not cold.
There was nothing else to do. When she finally dialed, the call went to voicemail. She hung up and sent a text instead. “Hi Oren, I just gave you a call regarding a story I am working on about two lawsuits filed against you and your brother Alon in New York. Would you like to comment on the allegations? Please let me know if so. Thanks.”
Less than a minute later, her phone buzzed. “Call me,” he replied. Typical, she thought. She had to call him after he missed her call. The power games had started. This time when she called, he picked up on the first ring. “It’s bullshit,” he said, calmly. He insisted on speaking off the record. Katherine told him she still needed a response.
She read aloud parts of the complaint to him, trying to make sure her voice stayed level. The hallway, the assault in their apartment. The chase through Sir Ivan’s castle. He listened, betraying no emotion. When it came time for him to say something, he let silence fill the room. But Katherine did not bite. It struck her that he was not angry, but dismissive. She expected more of an outburst from a man accused of serial sexual assault.
Read Also: Trump Organization Expands Globally Amid Controversy
Instead, Oren was silent for so long that Katherine began to shift in her seat. The lawsuits, he said finally, were a “money grab.” Extortion, fabricated by women who needed cash and jumped on his obvious success. By the time the call was over, Katherine got the sense he felt like he could brush this off in a few months, moving past the allegations.
But he had issued a couple of loosely veiled threats — including him withholding information that would lead to a scoop on a celebrity’s impending home purchase. Katherine was shocked. Did he really believe that they would bury a story about rapes for a tip? “I understand, but I am almost positive we’re running a story,” she replied. “No you’re not,” he said. “This is why I have a relationship with Amir.” Then he hung up.
Oren Speaks to the Publisher
Amir’s phone pinged around 4:30 p.m. “Hey, call me please. ASAP,” Oren texted. Amir, the publisher of The Real Deal, had been expecting the text. When he called back, Oren dove straight in. “Clearly, I’m not out there raping people,” Oren said. “These girls, they all call me. They want to come to my parties.” Amir told him the reporters had the complaints, that the allegations were “out there,” and that, of course, they were looking into them.
Oren turned to the case of Kate Whiteman, the woman who claimed she was raped in the Hamptons. Whiteman was asking for millions of dollars, he confided; When the case entered discovery, her claims would fall apart. “This is a shakedown,” Oren said. “If I give her this money, they’re all going to come out of the woodwork and they’re all going to want $15 million.
That’s why we’re taking a stand and fighting it.” “Then we’ll cover that,” Amir said. “We’ll cover the fight as well. We’ll cover the entire thing.” Oren asked if he could send Amir a document off the record that would vindicate him. The document in question, a “Confidential Mediation Statement” prepared by the Alexanders’ attorneys, arrived via text minutes after they hung up, and Amir forwarded the dossier to Katherine, Sheridan, Ellen and The Real Deal’s Editor-in-Chief, Stuart Elliott. A little more than an hour had passed since Katherine’s first call to Oren. But the battle lines were already shaping up.
The Vindication File
“The Alexanders take Ms. Whiteman’s allegations very seriously and vehemently deny them,” it began. The dossier was graphic. It also provided a preview of their potential defense. Whiteman’s allegations were “false, defamatory” and “blatantly fabricated,” a “frivolous attempt to extort a financial windfall.” And the Alexander brothers had “voluminous Facebook messages” — messages Whiteman had attempted to unsend or delete — to prove it.
Whiteman had “continuously and actively sought out attention from both of the Alexanders, including by soliciting sex, sending nude/provocative pictures, and sexually explicit comments,” they alleged in the document. The dossier helped explain Oren’s unusually calm demeanor on the phone. It was dated August 20, 2022, meaning that the Alexanders had been in settlement talks with Whiteman’s attorneys in an effort to keep her explosive allegations quiet for close to two years.
Oren had almost two years to contemplate and construct a response. The dossier also included a sexually explicit message from March, less than ten months after the alleged sexual assault, in which Whiteman invited Oren to come over to her apartment for sex, and attached four separate nude photographs of herself. In another explicit message allegedly sent to Oren the following year, she describes a desire to have sex with him.
Oren also sent Amir an eight-page “confidential investigative report” prepared on the law firm’s behalf the previous June. It revealed she’d been evicted from an apartment in Miami in 2016 and had a dispute with another Manhattan landlord in 2014. The implication was clear — Whiteman needed money and this was a “shakedown” to get it.
