Nomad Hack suspect, of Russian origin, Gurevich, arrested in Israel, faces American extradition
The Israeli authorities arrested Alexander Gurevich, a suspect in nomadic piracy which resulted in a 190 million dollars flight of cryptographic active ingredients of the transverse protocol, which resulted in a possible collapse.
According to reportsAlexander Gurevich was arrested at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. It holds double Russian and Israeli citizenship. However, he tried to go to Russia using a visa under a different name at the time of his arrest.
The striker behind the hack of $ 186 million Nomad Bridge was identified as Alexander Gurevich, alias "Block".
It corresponds to the profile of a cryptocurrency threat actor: skillful in the exploitation of smart contracts but ultimately canceled by a bad opsec.https://t.co/7u6plnewrh
– Peter Kacherginsky (@_iphelix) May 4, 2025
The Israeli government is now making plans for Gurevich to be returned to the United States. In the United States, he is wanted for money laundering and computer crime. American prosecutors said Gurevich was the first person to take advantage of the weakness of Nomad smart contracts. The stolen assets were mainly in the Stablecoin USDC and the wrapped versions of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Accusations against Gurevich in the United States against Israel
The accusations brought against him in the United States are much worse than the charges against him in Israel. He could obtain up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $ 250,000 for each of the five charges. For these four computer crimes in Israel, the most severe penalty is only three years in prison.
In the United States, the highest sentence for money laundering is 20 years, which is twice as long as the maximum sentence in Israel.
If Gurevich is extradited to the United States and found guilty, he will not be able to serve his mandate in Israel because he will not live at the time of crimes.
The case is processed by Avi Kronenberg, lawyer for the International Department of the State Prosecutor's Office. Department of operational coordination of the National Israeli Police Fraud Unit and the Division of Tel Aviv Fraud in charge of arrests.
Gurevich-Block was invited to stay in prison by Judge Einat Avman-Moller, and an audience was scheduled for Sunday.
Crypto ethical pirates are not so ethical
The accusation came from Gurevich by talking to the Nomad team on this subject in a series of telegram texts. He would even have asked for a reward of $ 500,000 for finding the weakness of the Nomad smart contracts which allow an attacker to use false transactions to withdraw money from the protocol.
Crypto pirates often ask the protocol in which they burst into part of their stolen property as a reward. Most of the time, the agreement includes the surrender of the rest of the stolen money in exchange for not having gone after the attacker with the police.
With the exception of a few famous cases, most pirates did not pay attention to this type of transactions. In May of last year, a pirate stole $ 72 million in a Bitcoin whale and agreed to return everything except 10% of the money.
In August 2022, US officials said Gurevich stole $ 2.89 million in crypto in Nomad. However, they lost $ 190 million. This means that there are more people involved. Apparently, a bunch of people tried to use the same attack as soon as it was found. This transformed the breach of a hacker into a free deffi for all.
Coinbase pointed out an attack that showed 88 unique wallet addresses which were then identified as copies. These portfolio addresses took $ 88 million from the bridge. Participants who participated in free hacking for all did things differently from Gurevich, but they all used the same flaw to get Nomad money.
In the end, some of the people who participated were Whitehats, or “ethical pirates”, who work to stop bad players or “blackhats”. Fortunately, the funds that these “white hats” withdrew from Nomad during the attack were returned.
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