Employee Fined For Mining BTC on Nuclear Research Center Supercomputer

An employee at a nuclear research center in the closed town of Sarov in Russia was fined for illegally mining Bitcoin (BTC).

Convicted to pay $7,000 fine

According to a Sept. 27 article by Russian news outlet Meduza, a man was fined 450,000 rubles ($7,000) for trying to mine Bitcoin by using a petaflop-capable supercomputer at his workplace, the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute in Sarov, Russia.

Sarov, about 230 miles east of Moscow is a closed town as it is the Russian center for nuclear weapons research. 

The court delivered the verdict on Sept. 17. The nuclear research employee was convicted of unlawful access to computer information and a violation of the rules for storing information.

Using illegal electricity to mine crypto

As Cointelegraph recently reported, an Armenian IT company was accused of illegally accessing electricity and using it to mine cryptocurrencies. The Armenian National Security Service claimed that the IT company installed cryptocurrency mining equipment inside one of its hydropower plants and as a result illegally consumed 1.5 million kilowatt-hours of electricity — worth more than $150,000, locally — over the course of 1.5 years.

In May, Cointelegrap reported that the state authorities of China’s Sichuan province were investigating local Bitcoin mining farms that allegedly been built illegally. More than 30,000 Bitcoin mining machines were reportedly constructed without official approval from the local government and were subject to further examination.