A Massachusetts man is facing charges after mining cryptocurrency in a school crawl space, The Washington Post reported on Feb. 23.
City employee Nadeam Nahas of Cohasset, Mass., will be arraigned today for electricity fraud and vandalism, the report said. He failed to show up and the judge issued a default order giving police the power to arrest him.
In December 2021, the town's facilities director (not named in the article) found computers and various devices in the school crawl space and reported his findings to the police. The town's IT director later determined the configuration was a cryptocurrency mining network connected to the school's electrical system.
Nahas, the town's assistant facilities director, was identified as a suspect. He reportedly resigned from his post in early 2022. The original article did not report which cryptocurrency Nahas mined. However, bitcoins are commonly mined in both legal and illegal mining operations.
Illegal cryptocurrency mining is quite common, as electricity costs greatly offset Bitcoin mining profits. According to Visual Capitalist, it cost $35,404 to mine one bitcoin last year —more than a bitcoin was worth at the time. Illegal miners can rely on venues that already pay for electricity to increase their profits.
Russian business portal TA Adviser has reported dozens of illegal mining incidents since 2017. Perpetrators mine cryptocurrencies in places like universities, psychiatric hospitals, government buildings, and airports.
While the majority of these incidents are related to illegal power connections, there are also some related to outright theft of mining equipment and other related crimes.
