Two high-ranking US officials were operating illegal crypto mining farm on school premisesd
The US Doj imposed charges against two high-ranking government officials who were using a government school’s electricity for mining cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrency mining is a process to power up the crypto network which requires the use of high-powered graphic cards hardware & obviously consume a high amount of electricity. Mining operations for the Bitcoin network consume the highest amount of electricity over other Cryptocurrencies. In the present time, the United States is the leading bitcoin mining nation-state with 38% of the network’s hash rate.
Recently the US Department of Justice charged two high-ranking officials from the Patterson Joint Unified School District in New Jersey.
Assistant Superintendent Jeffrey Menge and IT Director Eric Drabert allegedly misused the school property and electricity to mine digital assets for personal benefits.
To mine cryptocurrencies, they used high graphic card crypto mining hardware, used government places and also used the government electricity. In short, they were mining cryptocurrencies with the help of government resources without the knowledge of any government agency.
According to the DOJ, Menge embezzled $1 million to $1.5 million and Drabert stole $250,000 to $300,000. But they also emphasized that further investigation is needed & that will help to understand the actual amount of money illegally earned by these two people.
As we know mining a single Bitcoin we need to spend approximately 266,000 kilowatt-hours, which is equal to 7 years of continuous mining with typical monthly consumption. This fact created a very big sensation among the enforcement agency officials, they considered the potential financial burden placed on the school district through increased electricity bills.
The district contains a total of 10 schools which cater to 6,200 students. It is still unconfirmed that which cryptocurrency they mined.
It is worth it to note that recently the US Department of Energy (DOE) ordered all the crypto mining firms to report the energy consumption over the last 6 months, to determine the energy consumption pressure because of digital assets mining.
DOE want transparency and accountability with the help of its report.
Also, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) started a survey to determine the electricity usage by these crypto-mining activities.
Read also: LPL Financial Holdings will take 3 months to decide whether to offer Bitcoin investment or not
