Chinese Police Arrests Crypto Miner for Power Theft

New reports from Xinhua news agency has it that police officers from Anhui Province have arrested a man for an alleged theft. The man was reported to have stolen a significant amount of power in order to fuel a clandestine cryptocurrency mine. The stolen property amounted to 200 PCs used for bitcoin and ether mining after the local power grid company reported a spike in electricity use.

An individual was reported to have allegedly stolen 150,000 kW hours of electricity around May 2018 at a time when the power grid first alerted police of the theft. The man was only identified by his surname according to the Chinese national.

He was later reported to have bought the hardware in April, but later on found out that the daily power cost was over 6,000 yuan ($921), and as a result of this, Ma stated his mining operation was not profitable at the time of his arrest.

Charges of intensity burglary have prompted the capture of bitcoin diggers in China some time back. In April, there were no less than two situations where bitcoin excavators were arrested for supposedly taking force.

In another occurrence, six people were captured in Tianjin. Police claimed that the suspects utilized 600 cryptocurrency excavators to create bitcoin with influence taken from the neighborhood influence lattice. Xinhua News office said this may have been the “largest power theft case in recent years.”