Outrage has erupted in the United States after a senior Israeli government official was allowed to flee back to his home country despite being charged with child sex offences.
Tom Artiom Alexandrovich, 38, the Executive Director of the Defence Division of the Israel National Cyber Directorate, was arrested in a police child sex sting in Las Vegas, Nevada, on August 6 and charged with luring or attempting to lure a minor online to engage in sexual conduct – a felony punishable by 10 years’ jail.
But Alexandrovich was released on a $10,000 bond with no monitoring despite telling police during his post-arrest interview that he had flights booked to New York and then on to Israel. He also told police he was in Las Vegas for a Black Hat cybersecurity conference and had meetings with the NSA and FBI.
He then returned to Israel and police revealed his name on August 15, leading politicians and commentators to accuse the US government of intervening on Israel’s behalf, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office falsely claimed Alexandrovich “was not arrested and returned to Israel as scheduled”.
On Monday the US State Department confirmed the charges in a statement, but denied government involvement in Alexandrovich’s release.
“He did not claim diplomatic immunity and was released by a state judge pending a court date. Any claims that the U.S. government intervened are false,” the statement read.
Also on Monday the US Attorney for Nevada Sigal Chattah, an Israeli-born appointee of Donald Trump and Zionist activist, announced her office would not be prosecuting Alexandrovich, and would instead hand the case to the local District Attorney, despite it being a multi-agency operation.
Chattah then deleted her personal X account which contained calls for Israel to “wipe Gaza off the map” and labelled Palestinians “animals”.
Why did you delete your personal account? pic.twitter.com/GDZk5Zjwcs
— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) August 19, 2025
She later posted from her official US Attorney account blaming a “liberal district attorney and state court judge” for failing to require Alexandrovich to surrender his passport but did not name him or state his nationality, and claimed US Attorney-General Pam Bondi had called her and FBI Director Kash Patel “outraged”.
Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been critical of Israeli influence in US politics, weighed in on the case on X, writing “Paedophiles should not be released, they should face justice. No matter what country they come from.”
In another post she wrote: “Would it be anti-Semitic to drag Netanyahu’s Cyber Executive Director back and prosecute [him] to the full extent of the law and at the same time let Palestinian kids who had their limbs and bodies blown apart receive surgeries in America?
“And the most concerning question is when and how did America become so subservient to Israel that we immediately release a CHILD SEX PREDATOR after arrest, with a 100% locked up case with evidence, and let him off to fly back home to Israel?”
Two recent decisions made by the State Department both involve children.
We need to be the America that allows war torn children to come here for life saving surgeries and the America that never releases a foreign child sex predator that our great LEO’s caught.
But in this… https://t.co/DAoKlC2sNd
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) August 19, 2025
According to Alexandrovich’s now-deleted LinkedIn, he delivered a presentation to Netanyahu on Israel’s “Cyber Dome” just two months before his arrest.
Richard Davies, a criminal defence lawyer in Nevada, told Al Jazeera that the circumstances around Alexandrovich’s release were “fishy”.
“Average Joe gets arrested, he would appear in front of the justice of the peace within 24 hours. The justice of the peace in that county would issue bail conditions, which very typically would include a GPS device, restrictions on movement, not being allowed to leave the state,” he said.
“So the fact that this individual was not only allowed to leave without an ankle bracelet or a GPS device, not only to leave the state, but also leave the country, is highly unusual and suspect.
“That he wants to leave the country should be an aggravating fact to restrict his movement even more.”
Israel has long been known as a haven for Jewish American paedophiles fleeing justice in the US, with a CBS investigation in 2020 finding that many exploit the Law of Return that allows Jews to move to Israel and obtain citizenship.
Shana Aaronson, executive director of American organisation Jewish Community Watch that tracks accused paedophiles, said the US government did not aggressively pursue extraditions, Israel authorities did not prioritise efforts to track down paedophiles, and Jewish communities were willing to help them escape.
“Oftentimes there’s some sort of community incentive, either somebody owes them a favour or someone in the community, let’s say an institution, has covered up for them in the past and they know that if this goes to court there’s a lot of civil liability coming down the line,” she said.
“There are some prosecutors in the United States who don’t even bother requesting extradition from Israel for sex abuse offenders because, in their experience, Israel won’t do it,” she told Haaretz during a separate interview.
In 2022 American-born former Israeli health minister Yaakov Litzman was fined just $907 and spared jail time despite admitting to abusing his powers to thwart the extradition of paedophile Malka Leifer, who fled Australia for Israel in 2008 in a failed attempt to avoid justice.
Leifer, the former principal of the ultra-Orthodox Adass Israel School in Melbourne, was eventually returned to Australia were she was found guilty in 2023 of 18 child sex charges including rape and indecent assault, and was sentenced to 15 year’s jail with a non-parole period of 11 years and six months.
Header image: Left, right, Tom Alexandrovich (INCD, X).
