German Police Arrests Suspects Who Mined Crypto with Stolen Electricity

By Swati Kishore

Police in the City of Klingenthal in the State of Saxony in Germany has reportedly apprehended a group of criminals for the theft of electricity in order to run the operations of a crypto mining farm.

The police raid resulted in the arrest of five men and one woman.

The crypto mining operation was run by the suspects with a network of 49 computer systems from the premises of an erstwhile electrical services firm called PGH Elektro.

Reportedly, the illegal mining firm had consumed electricity equalling the consumption by 30 households since the year 2017. The damage caused to the electricity company due to the theft is estimated at USD 250,053.

The local news website Freie Presse revealed that out of the 79 computers at least 30 were equipped with specialised crypto mining hardware. As much as 80 GPUs were also found installed in the seized computer systems.

News of illegal cryptocurrency mining and electricity theft for running mining operations is not new. Computer-friendly criminals are finding ways to circumvent electricity costs to earn more profits.

In December 2018, it was revealed that a man from Taiwan was mining Bitcoin and Ethereum illegally by stealing electricity worth over USD 3 million. The suspect had reportedly mined digital currencies worth USD 14.5 million with the stolen electricity. The man in question had ingeniously paid electricians to rewire the premises such that the electricity could not be metered.

Way back in October, the reports of a Chinese man being sentenced to jail for stealing electricity for mining came to light. The man was apparently appropriating electricity from a train station (from November 2017 to December 2017) to power his 50 Bitcoin mining computing systems.

Going back to May 2018, it came to light that the employees working at Rivne’s police headquarters in Ukraine were mining crypto illegally in office premises for at least four months. As much as six power supply units, eight GPUs, two hard drives, a motherboard, and a computing system were confiscated by the officials.