A man in the United States has done it in a remarkable way. He had illegally bitcoin (BTC) and other crypto mining machines installed in a government building and was subsequently caught doing this.
IT specialist
This is about the 42 year old Christopher Naples. He is an IT supervisor for local government in New York State. He had been working here for over 20 years, but this now seems to be coming to an abrupt end. He is accused of corruption, theft and trespassing.
This is because he has no less than 46 crypto mining had installed machines in the local government headquarters without permission. In this way he was able to produce large amounts of cryptocurrencies without having to pay the sky-high energy bill. This bill would be as much as $60,000.
He had hidden the machines in six rooms under the floors and behind walls. According to the authorities, these machines have been present at the property since February and have been constantly mining cryptocurrencies ever since.
An official there, Timothy Sini, had this to say about this special situation:
“Mining cryptocurrencies takes a huge amount of resources and miners have to navigate how to pay for these costs. Naples had found a way to do this, unfortunately it was on the taxpayer’s back.”
Sini also indicated that Naples had installed so many miners in the building that the entire infrastructure was overloaded. Employees had been complaining about the slow internet for months and when the miners were finally removed, the temperature in one of the rooms plummeted.
It looks like Naples will face some serious punishment for this. He had indeed found a way to get out of the energy bill, but in the end it will still cost him dearly.