A senior Israeli cyber official working directly under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been named among eight men arrested in a US child sex operation in Henderson, Nevada but allowed to leave the country without charges.
Tom Artiom Alexandrovich, 38, Acting Head of Data & AI at Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, was one of the suspects detained during a two-week undercover Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force sting led by the FBI, Homeland Security, and Nevada law enforcement. Alexandrovich, who was in Las Vegas for a professional cyber conference, was accused alongside seven other men of using computers to lure children for sex acts, a felony carrying a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison under Nevada law.
Authorities named the arrested men as David Wonnacott-Yahnke, 40; Jose Alberto Perez-Torres, 35; Aniket Brajeshkumar Sadani, 23; James Ramon Reddick, 23; Ramon Manuel Parra Valenzuela, 29; Neal Harrison Creecy, 46; John Charles Duncan, 49; and Alexandrovich. All were booked into local detention centres, except Alexandrovich, who returned to Israel within days.
Despite lacking any form of diplomatic immunity, Alexandrovich was allowed to board a flight home without trial, bail conditions, or public explanation. Israeli outlet Ynet described him as only “briefly detained for questioning,” omitting reference to the felony charges or the joint sting operation.
Alexandrovich, who oversees Israel’s flagship “Cyber Dome” AI defence project and has deep access to classified state partnerships, was pictured as recently as March at a Tel Aviv cyberwarfare conference. The initiative he leads is designed to detect and neutralise cyber threats before they strike Israel’s critical infrastructure.
His sudden release has raised questions about US-Israel cooperation and political sensitivities surrounding his case. By contrast, British police last year arrested Ivor Caplin, head of the Jewish Labour Movement and a former UK minister, on suspicion of sexual communication with a child. Caplin remains on extended bail pending further inquiry.
The Nevada sting itself, which involved the FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force, Henderson Police, and multiple state and federal agencies, resulted in the arrests of the other seven men, who remain in custody facing trial. Police have urged parents to monitor their children’s online activities and warned of the dangers posed by predators exploiting social media and messaging platforms.
