Douglas Elliman and its former CEO should have known about the alleged string of drugging and sexual assaults by agents Oren and Tal Alexander and their brother Alon Alexander, according to the suit.
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A new lawsuit accusing former star real estate agents Oren and Tal Alexander and their brother Alon Alexander of sexual assault also accuses Douglas Elliman and its former CEO, Howard Lorber, of enabling the alleged activity.
The lawsuit also accuses the Alexander brothers’ parents, Shlomo and Orly Alexander, claiming they knew or should have known about the alleged activity.
The plaintiffs are a group of five women who say they were sexually abused by the Alexander brothers. The suit filed on Friday in New York Supreme Court was the 18th civil lawsuit the celebrity real estate brothers are facing following a wave of allegations that they drugged and sexually assaulted women.
The new lawsuit says that Douglas Elliman and Lorber “knew or should have known” that the brothers “had the propensity and did in fact sexually abuse, assault, batter, drug and/or rape women.”
The lawsuit said that in 2012, “a Douglas Elliman agent said that she told defendant Howard Lorber about being assaulted by the Alexander Brothers.”
The lawsuit says Lorber enabled the brothers’ alleged activity by providing them with “money, resources and corporate cover.”
“The negligence, lack of oversight, imprudence, carelessness and wanton behavior by Defendant Howard Lorber not only endangered Plaintiffs, and other women, but also created the opportunity for them to be dehumanized and violated by the Alexander Brothers,” the lawsuit alleges.
The Alexanders were arrested in December. They were denied bond and remain in a detention facility in Brooklyn after a judge denied their request to be set free while they fight the charges. The brothers have denied wrongdoing.
“Since as early as 2003 and until the time of their recent arrest and indictment … Oren Alexander, Alon Alexander and Tal Alexander … sex trafficked dozens of women, luring them in with their supposed successful and wealthy lifestyle, but it was all a ploy contrived to drudge, sexually abuse, assault, batter, and rape these women,” the complaint says.
They said the alleged sex trafficking occurred in New York, the Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard, Miami and elsewhere.
Lorber retired from the company in October after serving as its chairman since 2003. In the months leading up to his retirement, he faced scrutiny following a pattern of financial losses and the Alexander brothers scandal.
The lawsuit says that the brothers’ parents enabled the activity by “providing them with money, property, and other resources that were used to sexually abuse, assault, batter, drug, and rape women.”
The women asked the court for compensatory damages, punitive damages and attorney fees.
Douglas Elliman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. No attorney was listed for Lorber.
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