The arguments of the parties in the appeal
- The appellant filed an appeal against this judgment, through the counsel who represented him in the District Court (Adv. Yaakov Jaber), in which he raised various arguments against all aspects of the judgment. On January 11, 2026, shortly before the date set for the hearing of the appeal, a notice of the replacement of representation was provided, which was accompanied by a request to briefly postpone the date of the hearing in order to study the case. This request was granted, and the hearing in the case took place before us on January 22, 2026. At the beginning of the hearing, the appellant's new counsel, Adv. Sharon Nahari, announced that he would focus his arguments on two issues: the dual criminality requirement and the existence of a "presumption of charge" on the evidentiary level (see: the transcript of the hearing of January 22, 2026, p. 1, paras. 3-6). These issues were indeed raised in the reasons for the appeal that were filed, but the argument of the new counsel for them was significantly more extensive and detailed than that which appeared in Scripture. Therefore, and in order not to deprive any of the parties, we allowed them, after the end of the oral hearing, to submit written supplementary arguments on the aforementioned issues.
- In completing his argument, which was filed on January 29, 2026, the appellant argues that the trial court erred in determining that the main transfers were criminal. According to the appellant, the extradition request did not allege, not even implicitly, that the appellant "changed a code, penetrated the system, bypassed a security mechanism, or acted outside the framework of the normal and autonomous operation of the smart contract" (ibid., at paragraph 11). The defect in the smart contracts was caused by an error by the programmers of the Nomad system, meaning that it was an internal malfunction, and not a failure that resulted from an external action performed by the appellant. This error in understanding the factual basis for the extradition request, it was claimed, reflected on the court's legal conclusions.
- In particular, the appellant is of the opinion that the requirement of "dual criminality" is not met in relation to the offenses for which extradition is requested. As to the offense of computer fraud, the appellant argues that this offense, according to American law, is concerned with the knowingly transmission of code with the intention of causing damage to the computer, without requiring unauthorized access or other penetration into the computer system. On the other hand, the Computers Law, on which the state relied in this regard, does not recognize a similar offense, and the relevant offenses in Israeli law require that the defendant enter the computer without authorization, or substantially disrupt its activity. In the extradition request, according to the appellant, he is not at all attributed acts that are prohibited by Israeli law, since there is no dispute that the smart contracts are available to every user, without limiting the authorization to certain users, and because the appellant did not cause the collapse of the smart contracts or the impairment of their functioning. In fact, the appellant adds that even according to American case law that interpreted the offense of computer fraud, the acts attributed to him are not sufficient for the purpose of conviction for this offense.
The appellant further argues that there is no parallel in Israeli law to the offense of transferring stolen goods, neither in terms of the elements of the offense nor even in terms of the protected values underlying it. According to the appellant, the offense of transferring the stolen goods deals with transfer operations between different countries in the United States After that the property was stolen, while the parallel offenses under Israeli law relate to the act of theft itself (theft offenses in special circumstances and fraudulent receipt in aggravated circumstances). The appellant adds that the American indictment did not present facts that correspond to the elements that make up these offenses.
- Finally, the appellant argues that the extradition request has no evidentiary basis for the charge of money laundering. This is because all of the actions attributed to him were carried out through blockchain networks, which are open to all users of the network, and therefore it cannot be argued that the appellant acted to disguise or conceal the origin of the tokens, as required in the offense of money laundering under section 3 of this law. The appellant adds that the acts attributed to him cannot be equated with the offense of committing an action with prohibited property, under section 4 of the Prohibition of Money Laundering Law, since this offense does not exist under American law. In this context, the appellant adds that the trial court erred in not attributing weight to the opinion on its behalf, which showed that the acts in the American indictment do not constitute an offense of money laundering. If his arguments are rejected, the appellant requests that an expert be appointed by the court, in order to base the decision in the petition for his extradition on an objective professional basis.
- In supplementing its argument, which was filed on February 5, 2026, the state emphasizes that the dual criminality requirement is anchored in a substantive test, which examines whether the acts attributed to the wanted person constitute any extradition offense under Israeli law, even if there is no complete overlap between the elements of this offense and the offense for which extradition is requested. According to the state, the American indictment meets this requirement. According to the state, the transmission of an incorrect command ("process()" instead of "proveAndProcess()") affected the code of the smart contracts, and therefore amounts to disruption or disruption of its operations. These acts also constitute penetration into the system with the aim of committing another offense, taking into account the broad interpretation given in case law to the term "penetration of computer material". The other offense, according to the state, is theft under aggravated circumstances, which is expressed in taking the tokens in violation of the rules of the Nomad system, and fraudulently receiving something under aggravated circumstances, which is expressed in the presentation of a misleading representation to the system, according to which tokens can be issued to him without prior verification that the appellant has "locked" digital currencies of a similar value.
00 The state believes that there is a parallel in Israeli law as well for an offense concerning Transportation of stolen goods. The parallel offense, according to the state, is the offense of money laundering (the state adds that, contrary to the appellant's claim, it does not seek to draw a parallel between the offense of transferring stolen goods and the Israeli offenses of theft under aggravated circumstances and fraudulent receipt, and it relied on these offenses only in relation to the offense under Section 5 30The Computers Law). According to the U.S. indictment, after taking the tokens (issued by the Nomad system, and therefore affiliated with it), the appellant converted them into several types of digital currencies, transferred them between different accounts (crossing a state border in the United States), and splitting them several times. These acts, according to the claim, testify to an attempt to conceal the origin of the tokens and to obscure the appellant's identity as a beneficiary of them, as required in offenses under the Money Laundering Law.