Sheldon Adelson, the multibillionaire casino mogul who is close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been targeted by hackers who appear to have taken issue with his comment late last year that the United States should drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.

The hackers temporarily took over the website of Las Vegas Sands, the world's largest casino operator, the Allentown, Pennsylvania-based newspaper The Morning Call reported. The daily said people trying to access the site saw a photograph of Adelson standing next to Netanyahu and a line saying: "Damn A, don't let your tongue cut your throat. Encouraging the use of weapons of mass destruction, under any condition, is a crime."

The hackers identified themselves during their Tuesday attack only as the "Anti WMD team."

The Sands website was not operating Wednesday, instead announcing, "The website is undergoing maintenance."

In October, Adelson, a high-stakes contributor to Republican causes, said in a panel discussion at Yeshiva University in New York that the United States should fire a nuclear missile at an unpopulated area of Iran and threaten to wipe out Tehran if the country doesn't back down from developing its nuclear program.

"And so there’s an atomic weapon, goes over ballistic missiles, the middle of the desert, that doesn’t hurt a soul. Maybe a couple of rattlesnakes and scorpions or whatever," Adelson said, in remarks videotaped by the news site Mondoweiss. "Then you say: 'See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So we mean business. You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development. You want to be peaceful? Just reverse it all, and we will guarantee you that you can have a nuclear power plant for electricity purposes, energy purposes.'"

As part of the takeover of the Sands site, hackers released the personal information of some of its workers, including Social Security numbers, emails and job titles, The Morning Call reported. It said the company's email accounts also appear to have been affected.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is aware of the situation and is “addressing it as appropriate,” Bridget Pappas, a spokeswoman, told Bloomberg News. She wouldn’t say whether the bureau had an active investigation.