Israel extradited Israeli-Russian national Alexander Block to the United States on Thursday to face charges over a $2.8 million exploit of the Nomad crypto bridge, according to a report by The Jerusalem Post. The handover was processed after the country’s Supreme Court ruled that taking advantage of a software flaw can be criminal even when the code itself permits the action, and the decision blocked any further appeals in the case.

Court rejects “code is law”

Block, who previously went by the name Alexander Gurevich, argued before Israeli judges that although he exploited a flaw, everything he did relied on functions Nomad’s automated system permitted. He further contended that the public blockchain record of his transfers canceled out any money-laundering charge.

The Supreme Court disagreed. It ruled that deliberately exploiting a bug to take funds amounts to criminal computer intrusion, and that a smart contract permitting the action is no defense. The court added that a wallet’s transactions being publicly visible does not reveal who controls it, and does not rule out an attempt to disguise where the money came from.

Supreme Court President Isaac Amit then denied Block’s request for another hearing. With no appeals left, the prosecution’s international department, the Israel Police, and Interpol coordinated his extradition.

How the Nomad drain began

Nomad was a bridge built by Illusory Systems that allowed users to move value between blockchains, working by locking assets on one chain before releasing matching tokens on another. That architecture pools users’ funds in a single set of contracts, so one flaw can put an entire bridge’s holdings at risk rather than a single account. Prosecutors in the Northern District of California say a June 2022 update to Nomad’s smart contracts created a flaw in that system, one that was then exploited by bad actors.

The extradition request cited in the Israeli ruling says a user named “Bitlik” was behind the first thefts. He allegedly made six test transfers to probe the bug, then four real ones worth more than $2.8 million on or around August 1, 2022. To hide where the money came from, Block allegedly moved it between wallets and converted it into other cryptocurrencies.

His transfers also exposed the bug to everyone else. Other users rushed in and emptied a Nomad wallet that held more than $186 million, a free-for-all that wiped out nearly all of the bridge’s funds.

In August 2023, a federal grand jury indicted Block on eight counts covering computer fraud, transporting stolen property, and money laundering. The U.S. requested his extradition in December 2024, and Israeli police arrested him at Ben-Gurion Airport in May 2025 as he prepared to board a flight to Russia, days after he swapped the surname Gurevich for Block and picked up a passport in the new name.

Mixed U.S. record on “code is law”

Unlike the Israeli Supreme Court’s rejection of Block’s “code is law” argument — the claim that if a smart contract allows an action, that action cannot constitute a crime — U.S. outcomes in comparable cases have been inconsistent.

In May 2025, U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian threw out the fraud convictions of Avraham Eisenberg, who had exploited the Mango Markets platform. As TRM Labs reported at the time, the judge reasoned that New York was the wrong place to try the case and that Mango Markets had no rule against what Eisenberg did.

A Manhattan jury was locked in a stalemate in November 2025 over brothers Anton and James Peraire-Bueno, who were accused of a $25 million Ethereum scheme, as documented by FindLaw. The judge eventually declared a mistrial, and prosecutors asked to retry them in early 2026.

Then on October 7, another Manhattan jury needed only about two hours to find Uranium Finance hacker Jonathan Spalletta guilty on computer-fraud and money-laundering counts tied to a pair of 2021 attacks that cost the exchange more than $50 million, as Cryptopolitan reported.

With extradition complete, the eight-count indictment now moves to a California courtroom, adding another data point to a split U.S. track record that so far includes an overturned conviction, a mistrial, and a two-hour guilty verdict.