Israel Extradites Israeli-Russian Citizen to U.S. Over $2.8 Million Nomad Crypto Bridge Exploit

Israel has officially extradited an Israeli-Russian citizen to the United States to face a litany of federal charges connected to the alleged theft of approximately $2.8 million from the cross-chain cryptocurrency bridge Nomad. The extradition, announced on Thursday by Israel’s State Attorney’s Office, marks a significant development in the ongoing international efforts to hold individuals accountable for decentralized finance exploits.

The individual, identified in court documents as Alexander Block—formerly known as Alexander Gurevich—was transferred into the custody of United States authorities early Thursday morning. This transfer came after a series of legal challenges and unsuccessful appeals within the Israeli judicial system. Block’s legal journey toward extradition began when he was apprehended at Ben Gurion Airport in May 2025. At the time of his arrest, he was preparing to board a flight to Russia, having recently changed his surname and secured a fresh passport under his new identity in an apparent attempt to evade authorities.

The legal basis for his detention and subsequent transfer stems from an indictment handed down by a federal grand jury in the Northern District of California in August 2023. According to records cited by Israel’s Supreme Court, Block faces a total of eight criminal counts: four counts of computer fraud, one count of transporting stolen property, and three counts of money laundering. Following this indictment, the United States formally requested his extradition in December 2024, setting off the legal proceedings that culminated in this week’s transfer.

The charges against Block trace back to a catastrophic vulnerability that paralyzed the Nomad bridge in the summer of 2022. According to the U.S. extradition request detailed in the Israeli Supreme Court judgment, a routine software update deployed in June 2022 inadvertently introduced a critical flaw into Nomad’s smart contracts. This programming error allowed users to execute token transfers and receive assets on one blockchain without locking up the equivalent collateral assets on another network, effectively enabling individuals to mint or withdraw funds out of thin air.

Operating under the online username "Bitlik," Block allegedly probed the system before executing the theft. The extradition request states that he made six initial test transfers before carrying out four primary transactions around August 1, 2022. Through these transactions, he allegedly amassed tokens valued at more than $2.8 million. To obfuscate the trail of the stolen funds, Block then allegedly routed the digital assets through a complex web of multiple wallets and converted them into alternative cryptocurrencies to successfully conceal their illicit origins.

The U.S. case alleges that Block’s exploitation of the vulnerability served as a catalyst for a much larger disaster. By successfully executing the exploit, his actions inadvertently exposed the underlying smart contract flaw to a wider audience of users. This visibility triggered a massive, chaotic wave of copycat exploits. Other Nomad users quickly realized the system was vulnerable and rushed to drain a Nomad-controlled liquidity pool that held more than $186 million in user funds.

In the immediate aftermath of the breach, Block attempted a brief negotiation with the project’s leadership. A few days after the exploit, he returned a portion of the stolen tokens and reached out to a senior Nomad official via the messaging platform Telegram. During these communications, he reportedly offered to return the remainder of the funds in exchange for a bounty or payment for discovering and demonstrating the software flaw. However, communications ultimately broke down when Block cut off contact, prompting Nomad to turn all gathered intelligence over to U.S. law enforcement agencies.

The Supreme Court ruling

The legal battle over Block’s extradition moved through the Israeli court system over several months, culminating in a definitive ruling by the Supreme Court. The Jerusalem District Court had initially approved Block’s extradition in July 2025. Challenging that decision on appeal, Block’s defense counsel argued that the transactions in question merely utilized standard functions that were openly available within Nomad’s automated smart contract system. Furthermore, the defense contended that the public and transparent nature of blockchain ledger transfers fundamentally undermined the federal money laundering allegations against him.

The Israeli Supreme Court firmly rejected both arguments, siding with the state’s position, as reported by The Jerusalem Post. The court held that intentionally exploiting a known or discovered programming flaw to extract funds can indeed constitute an unlawful computer intrusion, even if the underlying software technically permitted the action to execute. Additionally, the court found that while blockchain transactions are publicly visible on a distributed ledger, public visibility does not automatically reveal the real-world identities controlling specific wallets, nor does it rule out deliberate efforts by a perpetrator to obscure and conceal the provenance of stolen funds.

Following the appellate defeat, Supreme Court President Isaac Amit subsequently rejected Block’s request for an additional panel hearing, exhausting his legal avenues within the Israeli judiciary and clearing the path for the State Attorney’s Office to execute the extradition order.

The August 2022 incident remains one of the most notorious security breaches in the history of decentralized finance. Because the initial exploit required minimal technical sophistication to replicate—users essentially had to copy and paste transaction calldata—Paradigm security researcher Sam Sun famously likened the chaotic aftermath to "a frenzied free-for-all," as hundreds of opportunistic actors rushed to drain the protocol’s remaining balances.

In the years following the massive exploit, regulatory and legal entities have continued to grapple with the aftermath of the collapse. In December 2025, the Federal Trade Commission proposed a regulatory settlement with Illusory Systems, the primary operator of the Nomad bridge. The FTC noted that the bridge suffered a devastating $186 million loss specifically due to a poorly tested software update. Under the terms of the proposed settlement, the operating company would be required to return any successfully recovered funds directly to users who have never been fully reimbursed. In the immediate wake of the 2022 attack, Nomad’s security team and white-hat allies managed to recover approximately $22 million of the drained funds.