© HandoutPaul Alexander
Convicted sex offender Paul Alexander, 57, showed utter disdain for his young victims, said authorities.
"(They're) from the Bronx ... the poorest county," he advised his johns, telling them they could win over the girls if they drove them around, fed them and gave them "a couple of dollars," said prosecutors.
Alexander found himself in handcuffs on Thursday when he struck a deal with the wrong client — an undercover cop, authorities said.
Investigators had been tracking the Bronx man since March when a teen girl came forward and said Alexander had sex trafficked her and other girls, authorities said.
The state Attorney General's Organized Crime Task Force and the NYPD's Human Trafficking Squad launched an investigation, which they dubbed "Operation Mile High" after learning Alexander was listed as the CEO of Central Jet Charter, a private aircraft charter company.
He was arrested in the Bronx after he offered up a 12-year-old girl and a 14-year-old girl to the undercover officer for $100 each — or $300 for both.
During the sit down, Alexander showed the cop nude pictures of the girls and called the children on the phone for brief meet-and-greets, officials said.
Alexander was charged with sex trafficking of a child, attempted sex trafficking, endangering the welfare of a child and prostitution. He was ordered held without bail at a Bronx Criminal Court arraignment Friday.
Neither Central Jet Charter nor Alexander's attorney Bruce Klein returned requests for comment.
Central Jet Charter says it operates under FAA rules that cover charter plane companies. Central Jet's graphically wild website claims the company has at least four employees and can arrange trips on all kinds of planes, from single-engine Cessnas to corporate jets.
Alexander's neighbors in Fordham Heights say young girls often came and went from his apartment.
"He would bring a lot of little girls here — Black, Hispanic, Chinese — he brings women of all types and walks of life, and a lot of girls," said one who lives below him.
"He never messed with my daughters, thank God, and I'll tell you why," the woman said.
"He would make so much noise that I would have to take a broom and bang on the ceiling.
"I could hear everything and I went up there one time with a bat in my hand."
She told him: "If you ever touch one of my girls or as so much as look at me wrong, I will kill you right here. If you touch a single girl of mine, I will kill you.'"
Alexander responded: "It was nothing, no, no, that's not true."
Alexander's apartment door is covered with stickers depicting princesses, diamonds, and slogans like "Kiss me" and "All you need is love." The stickers also included bible verses and religious like, "With god everything is possible."
"We just knew he was trafficking girls," said another neighbor.
Through the use of hidden recording devices, social media searches and undercover operatives, detectives were able to prove that Alexander had moved his girls around the five boroughs for sex, officials said.
Alexander was added to the state's Sex Offender Registry after he was arrested in 2003 on charges of kidnapping and having "deviate sexual intercourse" with a 17-year-old girl in Yonkers. He was ultimately convicted of possessing child porn in the case, public records show.
He also did stints in prison for sex abuse in 1992 and for bribery in 2008, court records show.
Investigators currently have no evidence that the jet company boss used his planes to traffic victims outside the city, the Attorney General's office said.
Thursday's arrest marks the first time that the state Attorney General has charged someone under a child sex trafficking law signed by Gov. Cuomo in 2018.
The law removes the need for prosecutors to prove that sex trafficking victims under 18 weren't willing participants.
Back then, Harvey Keitel's character was not taken out by the police, but by De Niro's.
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