At Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-Aug. 1, 2024, the noise and misinformation will be banished, all your big questions will be answered, and new business opportunities will be revealed. Join us.
Tal Alexander, co-founder of luxury firm Official, has now joined his brothers, twins Alon and Oren Alexander, as an alleged perpetrator of sexual assault in a lawsuit filed in New York County Supreme Court on Tuesday.
The lawsuit complaint, which was filed by Angelica Parker, claims that Oren and Alon, who is a private security executive, lured Parker and her friend to their apartment in New York City in 2012, where Tal was waiting, The Real Deal reported. Once there, Parker alleged that Tal and Alon proceeded to sexually assault and rape her as Oren watched.
“Today’s lawsuit is intended to send a message that the law applies even to the very wealthy and well-connected, including the Alexanders,” attorney Michael Willemin, a partner at Wigdor LLP who is representing Parker, said in a statement emailed to Inman.
“We applaud Angelica’s bravery in coming forward. We have no doubt that the Alexanders will amass an army of PR reps and private investigators to launch a victim shaming campaign, but she will not be intimidated, and this is not a ‘he said, she said.’ According to reports, dozens of women have confirmed the Alexander brothers’ predilection for sexually assaulting women.”
The lawsuit against Tal follows two suits against Oren and Alon, filed in recent months and first reported on June 8, that alleged the twin brothers raped and committed other acts of sexual violence against two separate women in 2010 and 2012. Since those lawsuits were made public, roughly 30 additional alleged victims of the brothers have come forward to attorney Evan Torgan, who is representing the first two victims whose identities were made public, Kate Whiteman and Rebecca Mandel.
Five alleged victims also came forward to The Wall Street Journal in a story that was published on Tuesday. Two of those alleged victims were identified as real estate agents.
All three lawsuits were filed under an extension of New York’s Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, which has given survivors of gender-motivated violence a two-year window in which to sue their alleged perpetrators, no matter how long ago the attack occurred. The window to file a lawsuit closes March 2025.
Tal had not been named in the lawsuits filed by Whiteman and Mandel, but Torgan told The Real Deal that other alleged victims who approached him had named Tal as another alleged perpetrator.
A spokesperson for Tal told Inman in an email that the allegations had been “fully expected.”
“It is unfortunate but fully expected that shakedown artists are going to line up given the allegations against Tal’s brothers,” the statement read. “However, Tal has done absolutely nothing wrong, and anyone hoping to peddle outrageous lies in hopes of a quick payday are going to find themselves disappointed.”
Official declined to comment to Inman on the latest lawsuit naming Tal.
In the lawsuit filed on Tuesday, Parker alleged that after she and her friend had been invited to the brothers’ apartment, they were offered the drug Ecstasy, which they declined. Shortly thereafter, Alon made them drinks and allegedly began to grope Parker’s friend, the complaint states.
The friend, named only as “YL” in the complaint, left the apartment because she started to feel uncomfortable, but waited in the stairwell for Parker because she was “so concerned for Ms. Parker’s safety,” the complaint says.
Then, the complaint alleges, Parker was raped by Alon and Tal in a “coordinated sexual assault that was planned and facilitated by Oren Alexander along with his brothers.” The lawsuit claims that Alon pinned Parker down while orally and vaginally raping her. While Alon was vaginally raping her, it further alleges that Tal then orally raped Parker at the same time. The complaint claims that Oren “sat and watched.”
Angelica Parker was formerly known as Angelica Cecora and sued boxer Oscar De La Hoya in 2012 for alleged battery and false imprisonment. A judge in that case found then-Cecora’s claims “completely without merit” and ordered her to pay De La Hoya’s legal fees and a $500 fine, The New York Post reported.
About a week ago, Oren Alexander stepped down from his role at Official in the wake of the rape allegations going public. Official has also removed any reference to Oren from its website and told The New York Times that he had relinquished his minority stake in the company.
Jim Ferraro of the Ferraro Law Firm had been representing Oren and Alon in their initial cases, but he withdrew as the brothers’ attorney on Monday and Isabelle Kirschner of Clayman Rosenberg Kirshner & Linder LLP took his place. Kirschner is known in part for helping a former New York City gynecologist accused of sex abuse to negotiate a plea deal that allowed him to stay out of prison.
In an interview with The New York Times on Sunday, Nicole Oge, another co-founder of Official and the firm’s chief growth officer, said that the firm is more than any single star agent in its roster.
“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,” Oge said. “Official is not Oren Alexander.”
Get Inman’s Luxury Lens Newsletter delivered right to your inbox. A weekly deep dive into the biggest news in the world of high-end real estate delivered every Friday. Click here to subscribe.
