A man in China has been arrested by the government. He was arrested for supposedly embezzling a large amount of power in order to fund a secret cryptocurrency mine. Xinhua news company stated that the Anhui Province electricity company reported a spike in the use of electricity. This eventually led to the confiscation of over 200 computers used for mining of bitcoin and ether.
The suspect allegedly stole over 100,000 kW hours of electricity for two months before the police were alerted. The suspect who is a Chinese national goes by his surname Ma. Also watchdog reports state that he told the police of his dreams of using crypto mining to make money. Ma allegedly bought his hardware in April. The cost of daily power was too much and his mining operation wasn’t making that much money yet.
Not the first scenario
This is not the first scenario were power theft led to bitcoin miners arrest in China, CoinDesk reported in April that more than one bitcoin miner was arrested as a result of power theft. Another instance occurred in Tianjin where over five crypto miners were arrested for stealing power from the local grid which was used to power over 500 mining machines to generate bitcoin. Xinhua news company referred to this incident as the biggest power theft case occurrence in recent times.
