Login
iscover
Share this article on:
Powered by
MOMENTUM
MEDIA
Powered by MOMENTUMMEDIA
The apparent arrest and subsequent release of the executive director of the Israel Cyber Directorate has proved that what happens in Vegas very much does not necessarily stay in Vegas.
One of Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (pictured), has taken to social media to criticise the US State Department after an Israeli government cyber official was allowed to return to Israel after he was detained during a police sting operation targeting child sex predators.
Tom Artiom Alexandrovich (pictured) was arrested and detained during a recent two-week sting operation that also involved the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, and several other police departments. Alexandrovich, the executive director of the Israel Cyber Directorate, was one of eight men detained, but soon after returned to Israel before taking voluntary leave “to address the matter until it is clarified”.
Taylor Greene used Alexandrovich and the US’ decision to deny visas to Palestinian children injured during Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza to attack the State Department.
“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,” Taylor Greene said in a 19 August post to social media platform X.
“But in this circumstance, those war-torn children are from Gaza, and this foreign child sex predator is from Israel and works directly for Netanyahu.”
“Would it be anti-Semitic to drag Netanyahu’s cyber executive director back and prosecute this pos 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?”
Greene noted in her post that Israeli children would almost certainly be allowed into the country for specialist care, or children from any other country in similar straits. But she reserved her strongest ire for the state’s apparent decision to let Alexandrovich go.
“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 per cent locked up case with evidence, and let him off to fly back home to Israel??” Taylor Greene said.
The Near Eastern Affairs bureau of the State Department responded a few hours later rebutting Taylor Greene’s claims.
“The Department of State is aware that Tom Artiom Alexandrovich, an Israeli citizen, was arrested in Las Vegas and given a court date for charges related to soliciting sex electronically from a minor,” the State Department said.
“He did not claim diplomatic immunity and was released by a state judge pending a court date. Any claims that the US government intervened are false.”
Steve Wolfson, the Clark County district attorney, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Alexandrovich’s case was not unusual. Wolfson said the “standard bail for this charge was US$10,000, so anybody, upon being booked on that case, can post that bail and get released with no conditions, and that’s what happened in this case”.
David Z. Chesnoff, Alexandrovich’s attorney, told Reuters: “There’s absolutely no truth to any suggestion he received special treatment. Neither federal [nor] state prosecutors have done anything untoward in this matter.”
According to media outlet 8 News Now, Alexandrovich was apprehended after chatting to a decoy that he allegedly believed was 15 years old and arranging to meet up for “sexual contact”.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
Be the first to hear the latest developments in the cyber industry.
