What happened in Las Vegas didn’t stay in Las Vegas — and neither did the criminal defendant.
According to KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, authorities said 38-year-old Tom Artiom Alexandrovich, a cybersecurity official for the Israeli government in town for a cybersecurity conference, was nailed in a computer sex sting attempting to arrange a sexual hookup with a law enforcement decoy posing online as a 15-year-old girl.
But after his arrest, he posted $10,000 bail and fled the country, the station reported.
According to Newsweek, Alexandrovich was arrested Aug. 6 in an “undisclosed location” where he had gone to meet the girl to take her to a Cirque du Soleil show on the Las Vegas Strip. The meeting apparently was to take place in Henderson, a town about 15 miles southeast of Las Vegas.
He reportedly said he thought the “girl” he was communicating with was actually 18 years old.
According to a news release from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the operation that resulted in the arrest of Alexandrovich and seven other individuals was a joint effort by the FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office, the Las Vegas police, North Las Vegas police, and Henderson, Nevada, police.
The charge is luring a child with a computer for sex acts, according to KLAS.
Israeli Cyber Directorate employee arrested in US on suspicion of pedophilia
Tom Artiom Alexandrovich
Is one sick dude Mossad requirements to work for them1 Be a pedo pic.twitter.com/M0ItpxOiqz
— Crazy Patriots (@CrazyPatriots) August 17, 2025
The case stirred immediate outrage, with Sigal Chattah, the U.S. attorney for the District of Nevada, publishing a post on the social media platform X that claimed Alexandrovich had been released by a “liberal district attorney and state court judge” who hadn’t forced the defendant to surrender his passport.
Should Alexandrovich have been allowed to leave the U.S.?
Both Attorney General Pam Bondi — a force in the Trump administration in her own right — and FBI Director Kash Patel — himself an emerging power player — are personally aware of the case, she wrote.
“The Attorney General @AGPamBondi just called me outraged and she also called the @FBIDirectorKash. The individual who fled our country should have had his passport seized by the state authorities. He must be returned immediately to face justice,” Chattah wrote.
According to KLAS, however, the case was handled according to normal procedures in Nevada, where criminal defendants first enter the justice system through the “justice court system,” based at the township level.
Those courts offer standard bail defendants can post in most cases, including felonies, without ever seeing a judge, KLAS reported.
That was the case with Alexandrovich and his Aug. 6 arrest, according to the station. And because he never saw a judge, no judge had an opportunity to impose bail restrictions like requiring the surrender of a passport, according to KLAS.
“There was no court involvement,” Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson, a Democrat, told the station in a report published Tuesday.
“There was no prosecution involvement. This is the normal practice. It is very standard in this community and many communities across the country.
“He was booked into jail. He posted the $10,000 bail very quickly and was released before his case even needed to go before a judge,” Wolfson said. “And it’s not only this, individual defendant. There were three or four others that, like him, posted the bail right away, so there was no court appearance.”
Still, Alexandrovich is half a world away from the justice system in Nevada.
The Times of Israel, citing what it described as “Hebrew reports,” noted that Alexandrovich had returned to Israel and did not face arrest there.
And he isn’t just a computer nerd in the Jewish state. According to KLAS, he is head of the Technological Defense Division at the Israel National Cyber Directorate. Israel relies on its technological superiority — both in battleground arms and in cyber operations (like a massively successful pager attack) — in its wars with Hamas, Iran, and other enemies in the Middle East.
However, in a statement to Newsweek, his attorney said Alexandrovich would fight the charges in court — and be back to do it.
“Our client is presumed to be innocent and intends to vigorously defend himself against the charge,” Chesnoff wrote, according to Newsweek.
“Mr. Alexandrovich intends to be in court whenever required by the court.”
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