A Church based out in Russia has caught itself mixed up in some crypto related crimes. The church was being charged for consuming a huge amount of electricity to mine bitcoin. The incident has resulted in a fine of one million rubles ($15,000).
How was church found guilty?
Irkutskenergo, one of the power company in the region, mainly supplying power to the church found that that there has been very high consumption of power from May 2018 and till August 2018, the electricity consumption has been reached to over 2 million kWh.
As per the latest report, the police raid guided to the discovering of a large collection of computing equipment in the church's building.
The main reason behind the delay of the punishment is that argued about the fine in the court, saying that the consumption of 2 million kWh energy was being utilized for heating in the building. Later the church denied that it hasn't used the amount of electricity stated, the court finally found that the fine is suitable.
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Earlier cases of Illegal Bitcoin Mining
This is not the first time, illegal bitcoin mining being caught in Russia. Scientists working at Russia's nuclear warhead facility, the Federal Nuclear centre based out in Sarov, were arrested for utilizing a highly powerful supercomputer to mine Bitcoins.
Scientists were caught easily in this case, because the supercomputer they decided to use was not being used for internet connection but security purposes. As soon as the department connected, it was being warned and later got arrested.
Apart from this, there has been a huge amount of cases being arrested for mining cryptocurrency illegally. For instance in Florida, one of the employees of the state Department of Citrus was arrested for participation in crypto mining.
From this, it can be concluded that there is a massive demand for electricity in cryptocurrency mining, hence it is difficult for hiding from authorities.
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