Illegal mining farms have been shut down in several Russian regions at once

Large underground mining farms were shut down in several regions at once. Cryptocurrency was mined even at a thermal power plant, and the power engineers themselves were in cahoots.

The morning of the detention of a trio of crypto miners from the Leningrad region will be remembered for a long time. Instead of the usual check of your electronic wallet, you came to them with verification. The detainees are considered to be big businessmen.

Their mining farm is one of the largest in the last few years. Several thousand pieces of equipment were seized, which would have had enough power to bring light to hundreds of homes. The earnings scheme consisted of deceiving the energy company: the detainees signed a lease agreement, imported equipment, and then simply underestimated the figures for seven years and paid pennies for electricity.

"There are hundreds, even thousands of illegal mining companies in Russia. The scale is quite large, but it is quite difficult to estimate it in numbers," said Andrey Chechulin, head of the St. Petersburg International Center for Digital Forensics at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Experts say that there is a real boom in illegal mining in Russia. And if the power engineers were deceived in St. Petersburg, then in the Kostroma region, the security forces found the devices right on the territory of the electrical substation. The director simply redirected the flow of electricity to a pocket-sized digital business. It looks like an ordinary boiler house in a provincial town, but according to investigators, bitcoins were mined in it under the guise of gasification equipment. Residents of Sharya are sure that because of this, there are frequent power outages in their homes.

There are two suspects in the case of an illegal mining farm. Maxim Valov, director of the boiler house, and his friend, a local businessman. The cryptographer was allegedly given permission to place equipment for the gasification of the enterprise. For this, the director of the power plant received 80 thousand rubles. The investigation believes that Valov simply took advantage of his official position and illegally provided the premises.

Characteristic sounds literally under the windows of the office of the director of the Sharinskaya CHP. The entrepreneur placed dozens of devices in a small trailer and used the boiler room's electricity. Valov, on the other hand, does not get in touch with journalists. Instead of answering questions about his illegal earnings, the director calls the police and asks his wife to sort it out. According to preliminary data, the damage may amount to about 120 thousand rubles.

"A criminal case has been opened against the director of a municipal enterprise in the city of Sharye, who is suspected of abuse of office out of self—interest," said Olga Vakurova, senior assistant to the head of the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Kostroma region.

Sharinskaya TPP is not the only place in the Kostroma region that powers mining machines.

"It is impossible to connect to high power unnoticeably. This is a construction site. Any line needs to be built. It cannot be connected to the cell. The substation will see it all. This cannot be done unless there is an agreement with the head of the substation," explained Dmitry Zuev, a member of the expert council of the working group on the legislative regulation of cryptocurrencies in the State Duma.

We got caught at the opening of an illegal farm and the Omsk power industry. The large site has been operating around the clock for more than two years on the territory of the CHP. According to investigators, the deputy director organized unauthorized connection and maintenance for the miners for a fee of 500 thousand rubles. The damage from the theft of electricity exceeded 12 million rubles.

Russia has already experienced one epidemic of gray mining several years ago. Then there was a shortage of capacity in some regions of the country, which is why mining is now completely banned somewhere.

"In particular, these are the so-called new territories and a number of Caucasian republics, and seasonal restrictions have also been introduced in such truly popular mining regions as Buryatia and the Irkutsk Region," said Mikhail Uspensky, a member of the State Duma Expert Council on legislative regulation of cryptocurrencies.

If illegal farms are not eliminated, the coming cold weather may become a global problem for the country's residents. The energy that should warm the houses goes into a senseless race for digital gold.

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Earlier, in June, in St. Petersburg, the police uncovered an underground mining farm that caused damage of almost 8 million rubles. 58 computers were used to mine cryptocurrencies, and the mining farm was powered through the main switchboard to a nearby substation.

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