Four accused of stealing power from Chinese oil company to generate bitcoins
Police say ‘mine’ used to create digital crypto-currency had been hooked up to company’s electricity network
Four people in northwestern China have been detained on suspicion of stealing electricity to mine bitcoins, local media reported.
Investigations began on Wednesday after police in Yan’an, in Shaanxi province received a tip-off about unusual consumption of electricity in one of the oilfields owned by PetroChina Changqing Oilfield Company, chinanews.com reported.
During a police patrol, police found a “bitcoin mine” at a hilltop, in which a power transformer was connected to a number of machines, Zhao Xiaobo, director of Yanhe Police Bureau in Yan’an, told the news website.
The discovery has led to a wider investigation involving a special task force and online police, who later found several “bitcoin mines” hiding in several oilfields where machines running the software used to generate the crypto-currency were illegally connected to the oilfield’s power system, the report said.
Some 1,600 bitcoin mining machines, as well as seven power transformers and network switches have been confiscated and four people have been placed under criminal detention, police said, without giving details of their identities.