Nomad $186M Hack Suspect Extradited to US — Will He Face 20 Years?

Israel has handed the man accused of kicking off the $186 million Nomad bridge drain to US authorities. The case now heads to a California court, and the ruling behind it could change how the next bridge hack is judged.

Key points:

• Israel sent Alexander Block, once known as Alexander Gurevich, to the US early Thursday to face charges over about $2.8 million taken from Nomad in 2022.
• His grab is said to have shown other users the flaw in Nomad's code, and they then drained more than $186 million from a Nomad wallet.
• Israel's top court threw out his defence and ruled that using a code flaw still counts as breaking into a computer, even when the code let the trade go through.

What happened back in 2022 is worth a quick recap, because it explains why this extradition matters. In June 2022, a software update left a flaw in Nomad's code. It let users pick up tokens on one chain without locking up the matching assets on another chain. Block, using the name "Bitlik", ran six small test transfers first, then four main transfers on August 1, 2022, and took tokens worth more than $2.8 million. He then moved them through several wallets and swapped them into other coins to hide where they came from. A few days later, he gave some tokens back and messaged a senior Nomad official on Telegram, offering to hand back the rest if Nomad paid him for finding the flaw. Then he cut off contact, and Nomad went to US law enforcement.

The legal trail since then has been long. A US grand jury in California indicted Block in August 2023 on eight counts, covering computer fraud, moving stolen property, and money laundering. The US asked Israel for his extradition in December 2024. He was arrested at Ben Gurion Airport in May 2025 while trying to fly to Russia, days after changing his surname and getting a new passport. A district court in Jerusalem approved the extradition in July 2025, and the Supreme Court then rejected his appeal.

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What does this ruling change for the next hack?

Block's main defence was simple: the code let him do it, so it was not a break-in. The Supreme Court said no. My own read is blunt: That answer kills the "the code allowed it" excuse for good. If a top court says poking at a flaw counts as breaking in, even when the software runs the trade, then the next person who finds a hole in live code cannot hide behind the code itself. The court also rejected his second claim, that open blockchain records cleared him of hiding funds. Public trades, it said, do not by themselves show who sits behind a wallet or prove no one tried to hide the money trail.

What comes next is a trial in California, where Block faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted, according to Israeli press reports. Nomad itself never really came back from the drain. About $22 million was recovered in the days after the hack, and US regulators later proposed a deal that would see recovered funds go back to users who were never paid back. The trial will put the court's new rule to the test in a US courtroom, and bridge builders will be watching what it means for the next flaw found in live code.

Read also: Utah Files 14 Criminal Charges Against Kalshi and Its Founders

— BitByLine News Desk

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Sources: Decrypt, The Jerusalem Post