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Previously, Russian police and electricity suppliers had closed and dismantled illegal crypto mining installations in Siberia and Southern Russia. In one of the cases, organizers of a mining company were suspected of stealing large amounts of electricity.

Reporting from Bitcoin.com, Monday (20/3/2023), the power company in the region announced on Friday, March 17, 2023, together with law enforcement, they seized 66 mining tools.

A resident of the village of Nadezhda, who placed crypto mining equipment in his house and connected it to the power grid, can now face criminal charges for running the underground facility.

Electrical engineers estimate it burned 954,000 kWh of electricity for more than 6 million USD 78,000 or the equivalent of IDR 1.1 billion (assuming an exchange rate of IDR 15,345 per US dollar).

A similar installation was discovered in the attic of a school in the town of Shelekhov, when police responded to reports by the local power company of unusually high electricity consumption and noise coming from the roof of the building.

Officers confiscated 25 units of mining equipment installed by the school’s electrician and a friend who is an IT specialist.

Such cases are quite common in the region of Siberia, dubbed the mining capital of Russia, where many people mine from cellars to garages.

They try to make money by using subsidized electricity in residential areas. According to a report in February 2023, more than 1,000 lawsuits have been filed against in-house crypto miners in Irkutsk.

This week, the Prosecutor’s Office of Tomsk, another Siberian oblast, announced it has approved charges in a criminal case against seven local residents who organized to illegally connect several places with crypto mining equipment to the power grid. They are accused of causing damage to the electricity supplier of around USD 310,000 or the equivalent of Rp. 4.7 billion.