Chinese Bitcoin Miners Busted for Electricity Theft

By July 6, 2016Bitcoin Business

Some Bitcoin miners have been busted for stealing electricity according to a public statement by police in Ma’anshan, a mining town in China. Very few details are provided except to state that 74 bitcoin mining units have been seized, coinciding with a small fall in difficulty of around 1.63% on June the 8 th .

This is the second known case of Chinese bitcoin miners stealing electricity. Last year, 200 bitcoin mining rigs were seized following investigation by Ma’anshan’s power companies and police after reports from the public suggested possible stealing behavior. The investigation found that an ordinary looking house in the mining town was being used as a small mining farm without paying for electricity to such extent that it amounts to a “serious stealing behavior.”

Stealing electricity itself is an imprisonable crime in China, with punishment extending to years and, in exceptional cases, even life imprisonment. But, sometimes, even mining rigs are a product of theft. In December last year four Chinese suspects stole 136 S7 and S5 mining equipment worth at the time almost $250,000.

Ma’anshan Nanjing police investigation led to one suspect, Yang Moumou, who confessed to the crime and showed the police where the equipment was hiding. He stated that after hiring three other collaborators, they went by car outside the walls of a mining farm and, after drilling a hole through the wall, took the equipment to a nearby van, eventually transporting them to a hiding place. The equipment has been returned to their rightful owners.

China now dominates bitcoin mining with one of the few western miners, KNC, declaring bankruptcy recently. The zero sum activity can be a risky business as natural disasters, such as flooding, fire , or earthquakes, can make equipments worth millions of dollars very much useless.

Even when all is fine, mining […]

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