MIAMI — Family has been integral to the multimillion-dollar business and real estate empire Shlomo and Orly Alexander have built in Miami over the past 40 years.
The family’s holdings include waterfront mansions in Bal Harbour and Miami Beach, a 48-acre ranch outside of Aspen, Colorado, and a security company that holds state and local contracts worth millions of dollars and has provided security to celebrities in the past.
But as three of their sons — Oren, Tal and Alon — face numerous criminal charges and civil lawsuits accusing them of sexually assaulting dozens of women, the Alexanders’ financial empire confronts a reckoning of its own.
While Shlomo and Orly Alexander have not been accused of any wrongdoing, the intertwined nature of the family’s business ventures could put some of their financial holdings in jeopardy as the brothers face the potential for tens of millions of dollars in legal fees as well as civil and criminal financial penalties in their various cases.
In a federal indictment filed this month in New York City, the government is seeking the forfeiture of “any and all property” connected to the alleged crimes, some of which prosecutors say occurred in the brothers’ luxury homes. The three brothers are accused of carrying out a trafficking conspiracy from 2010 to 2021 during which they lured women with luxury travel, drugged some of them and forced them to have sex at various locales, including New York City, the Hamptons and Miami Beach, according to court filings.
Shlomo and Orly Alexander founded Kent Security Services in Miami in 1982, not long after emigrating from Israel, and built it into a successful private security company with Orly’s brother, Gil Neuman. He is now the company’s chief executive officer. Alon Alexander was also an executive at the company, but was removed after his arrest, the company said.
And as Shlomo turned his attention to building and renovating luxury homes and condominiums, he collaborated with his sons, Oren and Tal Alexander, who were burgeoning stars in the high-end real estate brokerage industry.
Prosecutors say that the Alexander brothers “used their wealth and positions to create and facilitate opportunities to rape and sexually assault women.”
So far, more than 40 women have come forward accusing the three brothers of sexual misconduct, according to testimony from the lead FBI agent in the case in a pre-trial hearing this month. Attorneys for the brothers told the Herald that they plan to plead not guilty to the charges, which could put the brothers in prison for the rest of their lives if they are convicted.
Reached by phone, Orly Alexander referred the Herald to a spokesperson for Kent Security, who did not provide comment.
Neuman also declined to comment.
‘The scene of the crime’
After the late New York financier Jeffrey Epstein was accused of sexually assaulting hundreds of girls, he paid millions of dollars in settlements to his victims while he was alive, and his estate established a victim’s compensation fund that has paid out millions of dollars more since his death in federal custody in 2019.
Sigrid McCawley, an attorney who represented hundreds of Epstein’s victims, said she believes that if the allegations against the brothers are correct some of the holdings of the Alexander family could be the target of criminal or civil penalties.
“There’s significant exposure for the family assets,” said McCawley, a Fort Lauderdale-based managing partner at Boies Schiller Flexner.
Fort Lauderdale attorney Bradley Edwards, who also represented hundreds of Epstein’s sexual-abuse victims, said that the Alexander’s family’s finances will be strained even if the brothers prevail in court.
“Regardless of the outcome of the civil cases against the three brothers, the Alexanders are about to lose tens of millions of dollars defending the various criminal and civil cases,” Edwards said.
Value of Alexander assets
The value of the family’s various holdings isn’t clear. The Alexanders pledged $115 million in assets — using as collateral the parents’ Bal Harbour home, the Kent security office building in North Miami and Oren, Tal and Alon’s homes in Miami Beach — in an unsuccessful bid to have Tal Alexander released from federal custody as he awaits trial on sex trafficking charges.
At Tal’s detention hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lauren Astigarraga argued that allowing him to be detained at home would be “sending him back to [what], in many instances, was the scene of the crime.”
A detention hearing for Oren and Alon will be heard in Miami federal court on Monday.
If the three brothers hope to gain their freedom before trial, their lawyers will have to convince magistrate judges in Miami that they’re not a danger to the community or a flight risk — while showing that their personal assets can secure bonds assuring they will appear for trial.
The fundamental question is, what are the Alexanders worth?
A Miami Herald analysis of public records identified residential and commercial properties with an assessed market value of more than $74 million owned by members of the family or companies tied to them, though they still have outstanding mortgages on some of them. That would seem to fall short of the values the family presented as part of their bail proposal, the specifics of which were not made public.
Included in that accounting are Shlomo and Orly’s Bal Harbour mansion, which they originally bought in 1990 for just under $800,000 and which now boasts an assessed value of more than $14 million after extensive renovations.
Oren, Tal and Alon also each bought mansions in Miami Beach in 2020 that are collectively worth nearly $30 million.
And a company tied to the family bought a 48-acre ranch outside of Aspen in 2020 for $3.3 million. Shlomo, Oren and Orly Alexander took out a $15 million construction loan to build on the property in 2022.
The family continued to acquire property even after the first allegations against the brothers became public this spring.
A company tied to Oren Alexander purchased two spots this summer at the Carriage House Condo marina in Miami Beach, which is next door to the Perigon Miami Beach, a luxury building still in development, where public records suggest that Oren reserved a unit.
The Perigon’s developers declined to comment.
The family has also made millions of dollars from the sale of high-end properties they purchased and developed.
That includes a vacant waterfront lot in Bal Harbour. Shlomo and Oren Alexander purchased the property for $5.5 million dollars in 2012 and sold it for $23.25 million a decade later after building a mansion on the property designed by architect Chad Oppenheim.
Shlomo developed a Miami Beach property that Oren, Tal and Alon jointly purchased for $3.4 million in 2014 and sold for $27.5 million nearly a decade later.
And a company tied to the Alexander family bought an Indian Creek Island mansion for $10.3 million in 2007 and sold it for $47 million five years later, then the record for the most expensive single-family home sale in Miami-Dade County. Oren and Tal Alexander helped broker the deal, an early big sale for them. They also worked on the deal when the property was sold again in 2019 for just under $50 million.
Shlomo summed up the relationship in a 2020 deposition from a lawsuit related to one of the homes he built. Shlomo was considering retirement and described the pitch he made to an employee about potentially buying the homebuilding business.
“I told him you have an opportunity between me and my children,” Shlomo said. “We are the number one brokers and [general contractor] in Florida, in New York, in Aspen.”
Government contracts and celebrity contacts
The Alexander family’s ascent started from humble beginnings.
Shlomo and Orly hatched the plans for Kent Security Services around their kitchen table in 1982, a few years after they had moved to Miami from Israel with few resources, according to the company’s website.
The company’s bread and butter was providing security services for homeowner and condominium associations, Neuman, Orly’s brother, said in a 2013 deposition. Kent Security was also starting to pick up security contracts with local governments and the state.
That work wasn’t always without controversy — in 2011, the city of Miami found that Kent Security wasn’t paying some of its guards a living wage — but the company has been able to maintain government contracts in spite of that.
The Herald found that the state of Florida has awarded the company more than $6 million in state contracts over the past five years, largely to provide security at government buildings. The state Department of Management Services, which oversees the state’s contracting process, did not respond to requests for comment about the contracts.
Kent Security also signed a 2020 contract with the city of Miami that was estimated to be worth roughly $3.4 million annually. The city did not say how much it has paid out to the security firm over the life of the contract.
As part of the contract, the company provides security services to the Miami-Dade County school district. The city and school district didn’t say whether the charges against the Alexander brothers would impact those deals.
While Shlomo’s focus shifted away from Kent Security and toward his luxury homebuilding business, the security business also had its own brushes with high society.
Soon after fashion designer Gianni Versace was murdered outside his Miami Beach mansion in 1997, Shlomo, who then still ran the company, told the Herald that Kent had provided security at numerous parties held at Versace’s home.
Seventeen years later, with the wealth first afforded by the security business, it was Shlomo’s sons Oren and Alon who were the ones hosting a party at the mansion formerly owned by Versace.
But while Shlomo’s company kept guests safe at the fashion designer’s home, his children allegedly put their guests in harm’s way.
While the brothers don’t own the mansion, a woman named Maria S. recently told the Herald that in 2014 she and several other women were brought to Versace’s former home for what Oren described to her as a “private party.”
At one point, Oren offered to “show her around” the property, she said. But once they were alone in the mansion’s watch tower, Maria said he raped her, covering her mouth when she tried to scream.
Maria recently reported the alleged rape to the Miami Beach Police Department.