A high-ranking member of the Butyrskaya prison’s management is being probed for allegedly putting up a crypto mining farm in downtown Moscow’s Tverskoy District. Butyrka is Russia’s oldest prison, built in 1771.
The coin minting equipment was discovered in the psychiatric facility of the Federal Penitentiary Service. According to the business newspaper Kommersant, the Russian Federation’s Investigative Committee is presently investigating one of the deputy wardens for alleged power abuse.
The officer, together with unidentified accomplices, installed the mining equipment in November 2021, according to the investigators. Until February 2022, the rigs were extracting bitcoin.
During that time, the machines used about 8,400 kW of electricity, which the government paid for at a cost of over 62,000 rubles ($1,000). The deputy warden is accused of “activities that plainly exceed his authority, so seriously compromising the legally protected interests of society or the state” as a result of this.
For many Russians, crypto mining using subsidised and occasionally stolen electricity has become an appealing source of extra cash. Regions like Krasnoyarsk Krai and Irkutsk Oblast, which have long had low electricity tariffs for the population and government facilities, have become hubs for illegal activities.
Illegal miners have been blamed for a slew of outages and blackouts, especially in residential areas where electrical networks can’t handle the extra strain. To combat the problem, Russia’s anti-monopoly watchdog has urged that home crypto miners pay higher electricity bills.
Law enforcement organisations have raided underground mining operations across the country, with over 1,500 mining machines recently seized from two illegal cryptocurrency farms in Dagestan. One of them was minting cryptocurrencies at a water supply pumping facility in the Russian republic.
Can you imagine a bitcoin mining farm in India’s Tihar Jail? Lol
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