Crypto Mining Operation Found In School Crawl Space 52
A former employee of a Massachusetts town is facing charges of allegedly setting up a secret cryptocurrency mining operation in a remote crawl space at a school, police said. The Associated Press reports: Nadeam Nahas, 39, was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday on charges of fraudulent use of electricity and vandalizing a school, but he did not show up and a judge issued a default warrant after rejecting a defense motion to reschedule, a spokesperson for the Norfolk district attorney's office said. Police responded to Cohasset Middle/High School in December 2021 after the town's facilities director found electrical wires, temporary duct work, and numerous computers that seemed out of place while conducting a routine inspection of the school, Chief William Quigley of the Cohasset Police Department said in a statement Wednesday.
He contacted the town's IT director, who determined that it was a cryptocurrency mining operation unlawfully hooked up to the school's electrical system, Quigley said. The Coast Guard Investigative Service and the Department of Homeland Security assisted with safely removing and examining the equipment. Nahas, the town's assistant facilities director, was identified as a suspect after a three-month investigation. After a show-cause hearing, a criminal complaint was issued. Nahas subsequently resigned from his job with the town in early 2022, police said.
He contacted the town's IT director, who determined that it was a cryptocurrency mining operation unlawfully hooked up to the school's electrical system, Quigley said. The Coast Guard Investigative Service and the Department of Homeland Security assisted with safely removing and examining the equipment. Nahas, the town's assistant facilities director, was identified as a suspect after a three-month investigation. After a show-cause hearing, a criminal complaint was issued. Nahas subsequently resigned from his job with the town in early 2022, police said.
Mining Luna coins (Score:4, Informative)
Looking in hindsight, the effort didn't pay off in many ways.
Old P4 (Score:2)
CGIS? (Score:2)
Re:CGIS? (Score:5, Funny)
What the heck was the Coast Guard involved for? lol
They wanted to have all their bases covered in case it turned out to be a naval mining [wikipedia.org] operation, obviously.
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Re:CGIS? (Score:5, Informative)
What the heck was the Coast Guard involved for? lol
More than likely because the town is literally on the water's edge [cohassetma.org]. So not only would police be involved, but the Coast Guard probably has other investigative techniques the police wouldn't have. Also, in towns such as this, the police and Coast Guard generally work closely together.
Also also, here are some pictures [cbsnews.com] of the setup.
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Also, there's an all in one Mac of some kind in there. (Workstation? Or coordinator node for the rig?) With what looks like multiple server grade power supplies. The IT guys should have been wondering where that equipmen
Re:CGIS? (Score:5, Informative)
That's just where they laid out all the equipment after removing it from the crawl space.
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Lol, how is this marked Insightful?
That's SO clearly just photos of the evidence after it was removed from the crawlspace.
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Now, what about Homeland Security? Seems like a waste of money to bring them in.
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It's not surprising for someone with IED experience to get involved if a school tells the police they found some weird electronic looking equipment that they don't understand.
Re:CGIS? (Score:4, Informative)
I was just looking at Coinwarz earlier (Score:4, Funny)
It really does seem like the only way you'd making a profit mining proof-of-work coins lately, is with access to free electricity. Based on what happened to the guy in this article, I'd strongly recommend some windmills or a PV system, not stealing power from a school. The latter seems to have too much potential to end in an extended stay in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
There's that old joke which goes: "Don't steal, the government hates the competition."
Re:I was just looking at Coinwarz earlier (Score:4, Informative)
The trick is to find a school/office/whatever in a cold climate that uses electric heating (assuming such a school exists) and then surreptitiously dial back (or disable) its heating system while simultaneously putting in enough crypto-miners so that an equivalent amount of heat is generated.
The school's temperature and electric bills remain the same as before, so nobody notices, and the profits go to you. Win win!
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No, you're mistaken. If you're running a 100kW mining rig, then you're putting out 100kW of heat. The energy creates crypto on its way to being heat, but *all* of that power becomes heat in the end.
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If the waste heat is vented to the same space the HVAC is heating, you wouldn't need to do anything else. The thermostat would just run the electric heaters less.
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It really does seem like the only way you'd making a profit mining proof-of-work coins lately, is with access to free electricity.
The electricity isn't free - the local citizens are paying for it.
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The electricity isn't free - the local citizens are paying for it.
Well, I was implying free to the person utilizing it. A free ride still leaves someone stuck paying for the gas.
Seems like the trick would be to utilize a freely available resource that nobody wants (garbage) and use that to generate power with a small scale waste-to-energy plant. Haven't done the math, but I bet renewable energy hardware is still cheaper, and it's probably a nightmare to get appropriate approval to burn garbage.
Re: I was just looking at Coinwarz earlier (Score:2)
Many garbage dumps flare off methane to prevent explosions. Biogas generators hooked up to ASICs could be profitable long term as the market recovers: https://m.alibaba.com/product/60367248787/1-5kw-Home-Use-Biogas-Generator.html
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Even better: Rather than hooking ASICs up to them to mine crypto, why not just, you know, hook them up to the grid?
That's already done in many cases where the methane emissions are large and steady enough to run generation systems.
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That seems a very odd way to phrase it. Yes, they have excessive potential energy - but they're not converting it into electricity unless they have to, thus saving the fuel.
IE by burning the biogass from waste, they avoid having to burn natural gas. They aren't wasting it.
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Uh, say what? Generation plants DO have throttles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
An article [powermag.com] on the sort of valve systems used to throttle power plants. You wouldn't have these if you weren't throttling the fuel supply. And throttling the fuel supply means that you're varying the fuel use.
Here's a video on it as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Somebody has been selling you a load of bull. Probably to sell crypto.
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...
Seems like the trick would be to utilize a freely available resource that nobody wants (garbage) and use that to generate power with a small scale waste-to-energy plant. Haven't done the math, but I bet renewable energy hardware is still cheaper, and it's probably a nightmare to get appropriate approval to burn garbage.
You are thinking of Mr. Fusion. You don't need a permit for it, but it hasn't been invented yet.
Expect more and more of this (Score:2, Flamebait)
It seemed for a minute this tulip mania was beginning to wind down but clearly I was mistaken.
So expect more hidden 'cryptomines', expect more theft of electricity, expect more property damage, expect more malware, and expect more fuckery period. Because people will do anything to "gEt rIcH qUiCk" and fuck everyone else.
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Actually, from my regular news about crypto stuff, I've seen a steady trickle of cases like this for over a decade.
Here they found them in the ceiling. A few months ago it was that an employee installed mining software on all the computers in a college computer lab, discovered because he didn't set the priority low so the computer support people investigated why people were complaining about slow computers in that lab.
A few months before that it was an illegal tap bypassing a power meter. Another was them
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Re: Expect more and more of this (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)s not 2006, raspberry piâ(TM)s arenâ(TM)t going to mine anything.
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Fraudulent use of electricity (Score:1)
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I've never heard of "fraudulent use of electricity." That poor electricity never knew what it was doing.
In Puerto Rico it is common (or was, 40 years ago when I was there) for people to filch power from some other sucker's outlet. Throwing a party? Just run a 50' extension to the neighbor's outside outlet and run your "dj rig" from the neighbor's power. Without even asking.
Or fill their kiddy pool with your hose and spigot and water. Seriously, spigot locks were a thing back there. Need a key to open your own @$$% spigot.
That's fraudulent use.
Unless you went for a funny.. in which case.. sorry.. either i
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Had to complain and almost put a lock on when a neighbor started using my outlet back when I lived in an apartment in North Dakota to plug his car in at night.
Note: It gets cold enough up there that cars may not start or work properly until warmed up a bit unless you install extra heaters and heat stuff up a bit.
Of course, he had some trouble when I saw it because the first thing I did was turn my breaker off. So his car was dead cold that morning.
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Note: It gets cold enough up there that cars may not start or work properly until warmed up a bit unless you install extra heaters and heat stuff up a bit.
I've been dicking around with cars and other motorized thingies since I was 8. My first 3 years as USAF saw me as a mechanic. In England. At 32*F oil turns to molasses.. at the temperatures you get in North Dakota, engine oil turns into a solid.
I lived there for 3 years, late 1990's. Grand Forks. I was there for The Flood. I remember block heaters, which is what you're talking about. Yes, folks, you plug your car into 110VAC but not to charge it -- it is to keep the oil warm. If you don't... no cran
total "damages" caused? (Score:2)
OK but realistically unless he was able to hire electricians to run whole new power circuits, the total "damages" caused are limited to a few existing 20A circuits probably. Maybe a few hundred dollars a month of electricity cost at most.
So the perp will get a penalty to repay the cost and do some community service or something. Not sure why this is a big story.
Learning opportunity, missed (Score:2)
I guess 99% participants of this story, - students, coast guard officers, policemen, etc. would not know what is an ASIC, an application-specific integrated circuit. Or, say, how to measure how much electrical energy a machine actually consumes.
Your tax dollars at work ;) (Score:2)
Good to see them so well spent
fraudulent use of electricity? (Score:2)
Is that a thing?
Was it created to be able to fire someone if he forgets to turn off the light?
"vandalizing a school"
There's no damage and he had a key.
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*sigh*
1. Forgetting to turn off the light isn't fraudulently enriching yourself.
2. Like most crimes, it's a matter of degree.
He was using electricity that was paid for by taxpayers to generate money for himself. It wasn't a massive operation, but it will definitely have had an impact on the school's utility bill.
As for vandalizing, you don't know how he gained access to the crawlspace or what he had to cut through to run cables. There's no mention of any key in the report, so I don't know where you're pulli
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It is if I leave a solar cell calculator in there to charge.
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"vandalizing a school" IE - we arent quite sure what to charge him with, so lets just charge what we can to get a more favorable plea deal in court.
Quigley Down Under (Score:2)
No? Not that funny? K, whatever.
Barely worth reporting (Score:1)
Other articles say it was a dozen rigs and that he used about $17.5k of electricity. This is hardly newsworthy. A stolen car is worth more. And they used CGIS for it? I bet the govt wasted more money investigating and charging the guy than he earned from his little farm.
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Most investigations and prosecutions probably cost more than the dollar value of the crime committed. That is not a reason to not investigate or prosecute them.