Israel has extradited Alexander Block, formerly known as Alexander Gurevich, to the United States to face charges linked to the alleged theft of more than $2.8 million from crypto bridge Nomad in 2022. US prosecutors say the activity helped expose a flaw that was later used to drain more than $186 million from a wallet controlled by the bridge.
Block, an Israeli-Russian citizen, was transferred to US authorities early Thursday after losing a series of legal appeals in Israel. According to Decrypt, citing reporting by The Jerusalem Post and information from Israel’s State Attorney’s Office, he was arrested at Ben Gurion Airport in May 2025 while preparing to travel to Russia. The arrest followed his change of surname and the acquisition of a passport under his new name.
The allegations against Block
A federal grand jury in California indicted Block in August 2023. The indictment includes four counts of computer fraud, one count related to transporting stolen property and three money-laundering counts, according to Israel’s Supreme Court judgment.
The US requested his extradition in December 2024. The allegations have not been established in a US trial.
The case concerns a software weakness in Nomad’s smart contracts. According to the US extradition request described in the Israeli court judgment, a software update in June 2022 created a condition in which users could receive tokens on one blockchain without locking equivalent assets on another blockchain.
Block allegedly operated under the online name “Bitlik.” Prosecutors say he first made six test transfers and then completed four larger transfers around August 1, 2022. The tokens he received were valued at more than $2.8 million. The indictment alleges that he subsequently moved the assets through multiple wallets and converted them into other cryptocurrencies in an effort to conceal their origin.
The alleged transactions also made the weakness visible to other users. Prosecutors say those users then used the same flaw to empty a Nomad-controlled wallet containing more than $186 million in customer funds.
Block later returned some tokens and contacted a senior Nomad official on Telegram, offering to return the remainder in exchange for payment for identifying the vulnerability, according to the extradition materials. He eventually stopped communicating, after which Nomad referred the matter to US law enforcement.
What Israel’s Supreme Court decided
The Jerusalem District Court approved the extradition in July 2025. Block appealed, arguing that the transactions relied on functions available through Nomad’s automated system. He also argued that the public visibility of blockchain transactions weakened the money-laundering allegations.
Israel’s Supreme Court rejected those arguments. It held that exploiting a programming flaw may amount to unlawful computer intrusion even when the software technically allows the transaction to occur. The court also said that publicly recorded blockchain transfers do not necessarily reveal who controls the wallets involved or eliminate the possibility that someone attempted to hide the source of funds.
Supreme Court President Isaac Amit later rejected Block’s request for another hearing, allowing the extradition to proceed.
The distinction at the centre of the ruling is important to the case: the fact that a smart contract automatically processes a transaction does not, by itself, settle whether the person exploiting the system acted lawfully. Block’s defence will now be considered in the US proceedings.
The wider impact of the Nomad hack
Nomad was a crypto bridge, a system designed to move tokens and related value between different blockchains. Such systems depend on smart contracts to verify transactions and release assets. A flaw in that logic can expose funds held by the bridge, as the 2022 incident demonstrated.
The exploit drained nearly all of Nomad’s funds. Because the initial transaction could be copied without extensive technical knowledge, Paradigm researcher Sam Sun described the subsequent activity as a “frenzied free-for-all,” according to Decrypt’s earlier reporting.
Nomad recovered about $22 million in the days following the attack. In December 2025, the Federal Trade Commission proposed a settlement with Illusory Systems, Nomad’s operator. The FTC said the bridge lost $186 million after hackers exploited a poorly tested software update. Under the proposed settlement, the company would be required to return recovered funds to users who had not been reimbursed.
Moneyiar market picture
Moneyiar data at 12:48-12:49 on November 1, 2026, showed mixed performance among the listed digital assets:
- Plasma (XPL): $0.0734844692, down 9.67% over 24 hours and up 2.24% over seven days.
- Compound (COMP): $20.5879088974, up 1.32% over 24 hours and down 9.79% over seven days.
- Allora (ALLO): $0.1648840375, up 0.38% over 24 hours and down 9.61% over seven days.
- ADI (ADI): $8.0323971073, down 0.19% over 24 hours and down 0.22% over seven days.
The market figures describe price movements only and are separate from the criminal allegations and extradition proceedings in the Nomad case.
